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THE BATTLES OF 
THE SOMME 



PHILIP GIBBS 



THE BATTLES OF 
THE SOMME 



By 
PHILIP GIBBS 

AUTHOR OF "the SOUL OF THE WAR* 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



.SnG-sr 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
BT GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






m 26 1917 
©Ci,A453783 

PRINTED IN THE TTNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



CONTENTS 

CSAFTER PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I. The Historic First of July 21 

II. The First Charge 38 

III. The Field of Honour 46 

IV. The Death-Song of the Germans .... 57 
V. The Attack on the Left 65 

VI. The London Men at Gommecourt ... 71 

VII. The Men Who Fougpit at Fricourt ... 79 

VIII. How THE Prussians Fell at Contalmaison . 87 

IX. A Cameo of War 95 

X. The Assault on Contalmaison .... 100 

XI. The Battle of the Woods 109 

XII. The Fight for Ovillers 116 

XIII. Through THE German Second Line . .• . 124 

XIV. The Woods of Death 142 

XV. Prisoners of War 147 

XVI. The Last Stand in Ovillers 151 

XVII. The Scots at Longueval 154 

XVm. The Devil's Wood 160 

XIX. The Work of the Guns 172 

XX. The Fighting Round Waterlot Farm . . 178 

XXI. The Peter Pans of War 182 

XXII. The High Ground At Pozieres .... 188 

XXIII. The Germans' Side of the Somme .... 220 

V 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIV. The Attack on Thiepval 227 

XXV. The Last Fights in Devil's Wood . . . 244 

XXVI. The Australians at Mouquet Faem . . . 250 

XXVII. The Capture of Guillemont 258 

XXVIII. The Irish at Ginchy 276 

XXIX. The Coming of the Tanks 284 

XXX. Fighting Beyond Flers 300 

XXXI. Monsters and Men 305 

XXXII. London Pride 318 

XXXIII. The Splendid New Zealanders^ . . . .324 

XXXIV. The Canadians at Courcelette . . . .331 
XXXV. The Abandonment or Combles .... 336 

XXXVI. The Doom or Thiepval 345 

XXXVII. Northward from Thiepval 356 

XXXVIIL The Way TO Bapaume 366 

XXXIX. The German Verdict of the Somme Battles 371 



INTRODUCTION 

The Coming of the New Armies 

In this book I have put together the articles which I have 
written day by day for more than three months, since that 
first day of July, 1916, when hundreds of thousands of 
British troops rose out of the ditches held against the en- 
emy for nearly two years of trench warfare, advanced over 
open country upon the most formidable system of defences 
ever organised by great armies, and began a series of battles 
as fierce and bloody as anything the old earth has seen on 
such a stretch of ground since the beginning of human 
strife. 

Before July i I had an idea of writing a book about 
all that I had seen for nearly eighteen months, since I aban- 
doned the hazardous game of a free lance in the war-zones 
of France and Belgium (to me those were the great and 
wonderful days) and became officially accredited as a cor- 
respondent with the British armies in the field. I had seen 
a good deal in the trenches and behind the lines — nearly 
all there was to see — of stationary warfare from Ypres 
to the Somme, and enough to understand with every nerve 
in my body not only the abomination of this doom which 
put fine sensitive men into dirty mudholes and sinister ruins, 
in exile from the comforts and beauty and decency of life, 
under the continual menace of death or mutilation, but 
also the valour of great numbers of simple souls who hated 
it all and yet endured it with a queer gaiety, and laughed 
even while they cursed its beastliness, and resigned them- 
selves to its worst miseries like Christian martyrs with a 
taste for beer and the pictures of the "vie parisienne." I 
had seen, and suffered from, the boredom of this sta- 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

tionary warfare — an intolerable boredom It is, demoralising 
to men whose imaginations demand something brighter and 
more varied than a glimpse through the sandbags at the 
same old fringe of broken tree, the same old ruined house, 
the same old line of chalky trenches, from which death may 
come at any moment by rifle-grenade, sniper's bullet, or 
whizz-bang — which is not an exciting form of death giv- 
ing men the thrill of dramatic moments before they drop. 
Even in this danger there was no cure for the deadening 
monotony after the first few days of new experience. It 
was just another part of the dirty business, and, for men 
of nerves, a nagging, apprehensive thought, varied by mo- 
ments of cold, horrible fear. Behind the lines, on supply 
columns, at railheads, in billets, in squalid villages of Flan- 
ders and Picardy with their rows of miserable estaminets 
and evil-smelling farmyards. Boredom, monstrous and 
abominable, sat like a witch-hag on the shoulders of many 
men, divorced from the interests of their old home life, 
from their women- folk, from the reasonable normal rou- 
tine of peaceful careers. Discipline and duty had taken 
the place of personal ambitions and the joy of life, and 
they are cold virtues, very comfortless. Artists, actors, 
barristers, writers, sportsmen, and men who had found 
good fun in youth and the wide world, or some corner of it, 
found themselves as officers on supply columns, R.T.O.'s, 
D.A.D.O.S.'s, and in other administrative jobs, condemned 
to a drudgery melancholy in its limitations and apparently 
interminable. To many of them their area of activity was 
confined between one squalid village and another, and the 
chance of a stray shell or of an aeroplane bomb did not 
really brighten up the scene. 

They fought against this desolation of mind valiantly — 
and it wanted valour — forced themselves to get absorbed in 
the minute details of their work, sent for the old banjo 
from home, organised canteens, smoking concerts, boxing 
matches, cultivated cheeriness as the first law of daily life 
until it became a second nature, beneath which the first 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES ix 

nature only obtruded at night when they went back to sleep 
in their billets and before sleeping cried out in a kind of 
agony, "How long is this going on? — this Insanity, this 
waste of life, this unnatural, damned existence!" 

The fighting men had all the danger and, on the whole, 
were less dull during the long period of stationary warfare. 
They too cultivated cheerfulness as the first law of daily 
life, and it was a harder job, yet they succeeded wonderfully 
in spite of the filthy trenches, the rats and vermin, the ice- 
cold water in which they waded up to the front line during 
the long months of a Flemish winter (beginning in Octo- 
ber and ending — perhaps — in April) the trench-feet which 
for a time — until the rubbing-drill was adopted — ^drained 
the strength of many battalions, and the enemy's shell-fire 
and mining activities which took a daily toll of life and 
limbs. Many of them found a gruesome humour in all 
this, laughed at death as a low comedian, guffawed if they 
dodged its knock-about tricks by the length of a traverse, 
and did not go very sick if it laid out their best pal. "You 
know, sir, it doesn't do to take this war seriously." So 
said a sergeant to me as we stood in a trench beyond our 
knees in water. It was a great saying, and I saw the phi- 
losophy which had kept men sane. Without laughter, some- 
how, anyhow, by any old joke, we should have lost the war 
long ago. The only way to avoid deadly depression was 
to keep smiling. And so for laughter's sake and to keep 
normal in abnormal ways of life there was a great uncon- 
scious conspiracy of cheerfulness among officers and men, 
and the most popular man in a platoon was the fellow who 
could twist a joke out of a dead German, or the subaltern 
who could lead a patrol into No Man's Land with men 
chuckling over some whimsical word about his widow, or 
the comic corporal who could play ragtime tunes on a 
comb and tissue-paper. Behind the lines there were variety 
theatres in old warehouses ventilated by shell-holes, packed 
by muddy men just out of the trenches, who found it diffi- 
cult to laugh for the first half -hour and then roared with 



X INTRODUCTION 

laughter at funny fellows dressed as Mrs. Twankey, or 
Charlie Chaplin, or the red-nosed comic turn who satirised 
"brass hats" and the Army Safety Corps and Kaiser Bill, 
and the effect of a 17-inch shell in the neighbourhood of Pri- 
vate Spoofkins, V.C. 

Discipline and hard work helped men to forget the voice 
that called back to the days of individual liberty and peace. 
There was always something to do up in the trenches, build- 
ing up the parapets which in the Salient slipped down after 
every rain-storm, wiring, revetting, digging new communi- 
cation-trenches (under the enemy's machine-gun fire), 
keeping German heads down by sniping every head that 
came up, between the stand-to at dusk and dawn. After 
the relief in the trenches — getting out was the risky job — 
there was not much rest in the rest camps, what with 
parades, bombing schools, bayonet drill, machine-gun 
courses, and practice at the rifle-range. "I'd rather be in 
the blinkin' trenches again," groused the tired Tommy. 
"Oh, you'll soon be back again, my lad," said the sergeant. 
"Yet another week of your bright young life." 

It was the youngest men who were most cheerful — young 
officers especially, just down from the Universities or the 
Public Schools. Life was beginning for them, and even here 
in the dirty ditches they found the thrill of life, the splen- 
dour of life, the beauty of life. They found it splendid to 
command men, to win their trust, to "make good" with 
them. The comradeship with fellow-officers, the respon- 
sibility of their rank, the revelation of their own manhood 
and of their own courage — they had been afraid of failing 
in pluck — and their professional interest in their jobs as 
gunners or sappers or bombers, whatever they might be, 
were great rewards for the dirt and the danger. I saw 
many of these boys in places where death lay in wait for 
them, and they had shining eyes and strode along cheerily, 
talking proudly of some little "stunt" they had done with 
their men, and not worrying about the menace overhead. 
It was all "topping" to them, until the strain began to tell. 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xi 

The Ideals of the Public Schools, the old traditional ideals 
of British boyhood — f'Dulce et decorum est . . ." Play 
the game," "Flore at Etona," or whatever the old school 
motto of chivalry and service might be — ^inspired them and 
made a little white flame of enthusiasm in their hearts at 
which their spirit warmed itself when the body was very 
cold and everything comfortless. One by one many of them 
were soon picked off by German snipers or laid out by Ger- 
man shells, but others came out, and others, in an endless 
procession of splendid boyhood, still "to play the game." 
With them came new battalions of men, whistling and sing- 
ing along the roads of France. 

I saw the first Territorial Divisions come out, and then 
the first of the "Kitchener crowd," and gradually, month 
after month, the building up of the New Army. The Old 
Army, that little Regular army which fought on the retreat 
from Mons to the Marne and then upon the Aisne, and 
then had swung up into Flanders to bar the way to Calais — 
was gone for ever and was no more than an heroic mem- 
ory. In the first Battle of Ypres and the second they had 
done all that human nature could do, and the fields were 
strewn with their dead until only a pitiful remnant held 
the lines of that salient against which the enemy had hurled 
himself in massed attacks supported by tremendous artil- 
lery. Battalions had been wiped out, divisions had been cut 
to pieces. A year ago a battalion commander told me that he 
was one out of only 150 officers belonging to the original 
Expeditionary Force still serving in the trenches — and a 
year is a long time in such a war as this. I met men who 
had passed unscathed through all of that, but there were 
not many of them. The regiments remained, but they 
were filled up with new drafts. The old traditions re- 
mained, fostered by the old soldiers here and there, and 
by officers who know the value of tradition, but they were 
new men and new armies who were beginning to crowd the 
roads of France and to straighten the lines of defence. 
They were the lads who had been called to the colours by 



xii INTRODUCTION 

the shouts of the street placards: "Your King and Country 
need you," "What did you do, daddy, in the Great War?" 
(I could not print the outrageous answers I have heard to 
that little simple question!) and "What will your best girl 
say if you don't wear khaki?" They had been called by 
quieter and nobler voices also, speaking to their hearts 
above the clicking of typewriters in city offices and the 
whirr of machinery in great workshops and in the silence 
of the fields where they followed the plough. It was an 
arrr.y of amateurs hastily drilled, hastily trained, knowing 
very little of the real business of war, but quick to learn 
and full of pluck. They were led for the most part by 
temporary officers "for the period of the war only," with 
a few old "dug-outs" among them and some old non-com- 
missioned officers to stiffen them. The Germans jeered at 
them— not the enemy in the trenches but the enemy in hos- 
tile newspaper offices. "What can this rabble of amateurs 
do?" they asked. The answer was kept waiting for a little 
while. 

The New Armies were learning. They were bearing the 
hardships, the cruelties, the brutalities of war, and had to 
suffer and "stick" them. They were learning the craft 
of modern warfare in trenches, mine-shafts, and saps, be- 
hind field-guns and "heavies," and they had to pay for their 
lessons by blood and agony. I went to see the New Armies 
learning their lesson In frightful places. Always the 
worst place was the Ypres Salient, where the enemy had 
the advantage of ground and observation, so that he could 
shoot at our men from three points of the compass and 
even hit them in the back. The names of all these places 
In the Salient are a litany of death — Pilkem, Potije, Hooge, 
Zillebeke, Vlamertinghe, Sanctuary Wood — and Hooge was 
the concentration-ground of all that was devilish. Dead 
bodies were heaped there, buried and unburled. Men dug 
into corruption when they tried to dig a trench. Men sat 
on dead bodies when they peered through their periscopes. 
They ate and slept with the stench of death in their nostrils. 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xiii 

Below them were the enemy's mine-shafts; beyond them 
were our own mine-shafts. It was a competition in blowing 
up the tumbled earth, and men fought like devils with 
bombs and bayonets over mine-craters which had buried an- 
other score or so of men. The story of Hooge was a serial 
carried on from week to week, but the place was only one 
of our little schools of war for bright young men. 

Always the City of the Salient — the ghost-city of Ypres 
— stood as a memorial of death, and of that dreadful day in 
April of 191 5 when the enemy first discharged his poison- 
gas, flung a storm of great shells into the streets and 
strewed them and the fields around with dead men, dead 
horses, and dead women. I had been first intO' Ypres in 
March, when the beauty of its Cloth Hall and of all its 
churches and of its quaint old houses was untouched. The 
Grande Place was full of cheerful English soldiers chafiing 
the Flemish girls at their booths and stalls, buying picture 
post cards and souvenirs in the shops, and strolling into 
the Cloth Hall to stare at the painted frescoes and the 
richness of its mediaeval decorations. I had tea with a party 
of officers in a bun-shop facing the Cathedral, . . . When 
I went into Ypres again, a few weeks later, there was a 
great hole where the bun-shop had been and only litters of 
stone and brickwork where the soldiers had bought their 
picture post cards, and the Grande Place was a desert 
about the tragic ruins of the great Cloth Hall and Cathe- 
dral, which were but skeletons in stone with broken arches, 
broken pillars, broken walls standing gaunt above great 
piles of masonry. The Horror had come, when suddenly 
on the breath of the wind a poisonous cloud stole into the 
city, and there was a wild stampede of people choking and 
gasping, terror-stricken, black in the face with the struggle 
to breathe. British soldiers and Indian soldiers joined the 
flight of the people of Ypres in a wild turmoil through the 
streets. Many of them fell and died on the way. A des- 
patch-rider rode the other way, towards the poison cloud. 
He had a message to carry to the lines beyond. The gas 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

caught him in the throat and he fell off his motor-cycle and 
lay dead, while his machine went on until it crashed into 
a wall. Then the storm of shells burst over the city, fling- 
ing down houses, tearing great holes in them, and lighting 
great bonfires which blazed high, so that from a distance 
Ypres was one flaming torch. . . . There were people who 
could not get away, poor women and children who were 
caught in their cellars. One woman lay ill and could not be 
moved. An officer of the R.A.M.C. promised to get back to 
her if he could get an ambulance through the fires and 
shells. Late in the evening he found her in a field two miles 
away with a new-born baby by her side. A young French 
officer stayed with a crowd of wounded all huddled in an 
an underground drain-pipe and tried to bandage them and 
keep them alive till other help came. For four days they 
could not move out of the hole, so that it was pestilential. 
Two little wounded girls lay there among the dead and 
dying. One of them, with eyes strangely bright, talked 
continually in a voice preternaturally clear, sharp and metal- 
lic, without intonation. She was a Flemish child, but 
again and again she spoke three words of French : "Moi, 
morte demain. . . . Moi, morte demain." She died in the 
arms of the young Frenchman. "I am astonished that I 
did not go mad," says the young Baron de Rosen, remem- 
bering these hours. 

In the summer of 191 5 I went into Ypres several times, 
and always the sinister horror of the place put its spell upon 
me. I spent a night there with a friend — a strange, fan- 
tastic night, when shells came whirring overhead, falling 
with heavy crashes into the ruins. Beyond, the line of the 
Salient was outlined by the white light of flares. In aban- 
doned dug-outs were wild cats who spat at me when I 
peered in. A lonely sentry — poor boy! — had the jim-jams 
and saw ghosts about; and truly Ypres should be full of 
ghosts if they walk o' nights — the ghosts of all the men 
who have been buried alive here under the fallen masonry, 
and have been killed here by shells which have dug enot'- 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xv 

mous craters in the roadways. One day two German aero- 
planes flung down bombs as I stood in the Grande Place 
staring at its desolation, I was amazed to know how 
qinckly I found a hole under a wall which I had not seen 
before. . . . Ypres was never a safe place, and in the 
minds of many thousands of British soldiers who once 
passed through its ruins it is etched as one of the ghastly 
pictures of war. 

All through 19 15 we had in France not an army of attack 
but an army of defence. This was not properly realised by 
the people at home, by our Allies, or by some of our gen- 
erals. There were demands for attack before we had 
enough men or enough guns or enough ammunition. It was 
a tragedy that we had to make several attacks without a real 
chance of success. Neuve Chapelle was one of them. Loos 
was another, more formidable and brilliantly carried out 
as far as Hill 70 by the 15th (Scottish) Division and the 
47th (London Territorial) Division, supported on their left 
by the 9th (Scottish) Division and co-operating with a 
strong French attack on the right along the Vimy Ridge, 
but unable to inflict as much damage upon the enemy as 
we suffered in the assault and the following days when 
the Guards attacked at Hulluch. 

It was the first great bombardment of ours I had seen, 
though I had seen many small ones since an attack on 
Wyghtschaete in March of 191 5, and was the first time 
when we showed any real strength in massed artillery, but 
we did not support the first assault with strong reserves, 
tactical blunders were made, and the enemy was able to 
rally after some hours of panic, when their gunners began 
to move away from Lens and we had a great chance. The 
disappointment came very quickly upon one's first hopes, 
but to me the memory of Loos is the revelation of the as- 
tounding courage of those men of the London, the Scottish, 
and the Guards Divisions who proved the mettle of the 
New Armies (for even most of the Guards were new men) 
and went into battle with a high-spirited valour which could 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

not have been surpassed by the old Regulars. The Scots 
were played on by their pipers. The London men played 
mouth-organs, dribbled a football — as every one knows — 
all the way to Loos, and sang "Who's Your Lady Friend?" 
amidst the crash of shell-fire. 

So now there were other classrooms in the school of 
war — the Hohenzollern Redoubt, Hulluch, Loos, and other 
hot spots in that broad, flat, barren, villainous plain pimpled 
by black slag-heaps — Fosse 8 and Fosse 14 bis — which one 
approached through miles of communication-trenches under 
the whirring of many shells. I went to these places when 
the battle was on, and afterwards. Quite a long way away 
from them there were spots where one hated to linger, and 
through which one had to pass to get to the battlefields. 
Noyelles-les-Vermelles was one of them, and I had some 
nasty hours there when I went for afternoon tea with some 
officers and found the enemy searching for that house with 
four-inch shells, which knocked out three gunners in the 
back yard just as I arrived, and killed some horses as I 
walked across the field between the bursting crumps — there 
was a blue sky overhead and fleecy clouds and a golden sun- 
shine — ^to a hall door where a number of young men were 
expecting death — disliking it exceedingly, but chatting about 
trivial things with occasional laughter which did not ring 
quite true. Vermelles was another of them, and I never 
went without foreboding into that village of ruins where 
the French had fought like tigers from garden to garden 
and house to house before the capture of the chateau — do 
you remember how they fought on the ground floor with the 
Germans above and below them, until the first-floor ceiling 
gave way and Germans came through and a young French 
lieutenant swung a marble Venus round his head in the 
midst of a writhing mob of men clutching at each other's 
throats ? Shells made smaller dust day by day of all these 
rubbish-heaps and bigger holes in the standing walls. The 
smell of poison-gas reeked from the bricks and the litter. 
Other smells lurked about like obscene spectres. At any 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xvii 

moment of the day or night death might come here, and did, 
without warning. . . . Higher up one felt safer in the wind- 
ing ditches leading to the front lines. But it was the ostrich 
sense of safety. One had only to mount a sandbag and 
glance over the side of the trench to see how the enemy's 
"crumps" were flinging up fountains of earth in all directions. 
They came whining with their high gobbling notes over- 
head. Dead bodies lay about. Up in the front trenches, by 
Hulluch and the Hohenzollern, men lived always close to 
mine-shafts which might open the earth beneath them at 
any moment and bury them or hurl them high. There were 
bombing fights on the lips of the shell-craters. In some 
places a few yards only separated British soldiers and Ger- 
man soldiers. They fought with each other in saps. It 
was another Hooge. 

I was only a looker-on and reporter of other men's cour- 
age and sacrifice — a miserable game, rather wearing to the 
nerves and spirit. There were many places to visit along 
the front, and although they were not places where it is 
agreeable to pass a few hours for amusement's sake, there 
was an immense interest in these peep-shows of war where 
one saw the real thing and the spirit of it all and the ugli- 
ness, and the simple heroism of the men there. "Plug 
Street" was the elementary training school for many of the 
new divisions, with a touch of Arcadia in its woods in spite 
of the snipers' bullets which came "zip-zip" through the 
branches and the brushwood fringes along the outer walks, 
past which one had to creep warily lest watchful eyes should 
see one and stop one dead. A fairly safe place "Plug 
Street" was supposed to be, but men were killed there all 
right — each time I went I saw a dead body carried down 
one of the glades — and at Hyde Park Corner, on the edge 
of it, a colleague of mine was hit in the stomach by the 
nose of a shell, and here I first heard the voice of "Percy," a 
high-velocity fellow who kills you before you know he is 
coming. 

Then there was Kemmel and its neighbourhood for an 



xvin INTRODUCTION 

afternoon's adventure any time one liked to be brave or felt 
inclined to look down into the German trenches from Hill 
65, which gave a very fine view of them, up above Kemmel 
village, strafed into a miserable huddle of ruins and damna- 
bly sinister about the deep shell-craters and the overthrown 
crosses in a wrecked churchyard. I went there one day in 
a snowstorm, and coming back out of its desolation — where 
plucky young men lived with their guns and wondered now 
and then, at their mess-table in a broken barn, whose num- 
ber would be written up next — saw a man in full evening 
dress without an overcoat and with a bowler-hat upon his 
head, walking in a leisurely way through the snowflakes and 
past the churchyard with its opened graves. A fantastic 
figure to meet on a battlefield, but not madder than many 
things in this mad dream which is war. 

Up in the trenches at Neuve Chapelle, beyond the ruins of 
Croix Barbee, there were bits of open country across which 
one had to sprint between one trench and another because 
of German machine-guns trained upon them day and night. 
I ran across them on Christmas Day to wish good luck to 
some country boys who were sitting in puddles below the 
fire-step and chatting with grave irony about peace on earth, 
goodwill to men, and the Christmas stockings — waders, 
really — which they had hung up outside their dug-outs to 
see how the trick would work in war-time. It hadn't 
worked, and they groused against Santa Claus and laughed 
at this little joke of theirs to hide the sentiment in their 
hearts. 

Festubert and Givenchy, Armentieres and Houplines, were 
other familiar places which one approached through ruins 
before getting into the ditches where the British Army was 
learning its lessons. Then as the armies grew the British 
line was lengthened and we took over from the French, 
from Hebuterne to Vaux-sur-Somme, and afterwards, in 
February, when the Germans began their great attack upon 
Verdun, from the Vimy Ridge to the south of Arras. 
There was plenty of room here for the new Divisions who 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xix 

were coming out to learn, and plenty of practical object- 
lessons in the abominable business of war. We learnt a lot 
of French geography, and dozens of small villages unknown 
before to history are now famous among British soldiers as 
places where they lived under daily shell-fire, where they 
escaped death by the queerest flukes, or where they were 
hit at last after a thousand escapes. 

Sailly-au-Bois was a village on the way to Hebuterne. A 
charming little place it must have been once, with quaint 
old cottages and a market square. When I went there first 
the Germans disliked it, plugged shells into most of the 
houses and into one where a number of Sussex gentlemen 
were sitting down to lunch. It spoilt their meal for them 
and made a new entrance through the dining-room wall. Be- 
yond the village was the road to Hebuterne. It led through 
open fields and past a belt of trees less than a thousand 
yards away, where the Germans lay watching behind their 
rifle-barrels. But the French had made a friendly little ar- 
rangement. If an open car crawled down slowly the Ger- 
mans did not snipe. If it were a covered car, presumably 
a General's, or went fast, they had the right to shoot. 
Queer, though it seemed to work. But I was always glad 
to get the length of that road and to find some cover in the 
fortress-village of Hebuterne, with its deep dug-outs, proof 
against the lighter kind of shells. The Germans had been 
here first and had dug in with their usual industry. Then 
the French had turned them out after ferocious fighting — 
there are many French graves there in the Orchard and in 
the trenches, and a little altar still kept in good order by 
British soldiers to Notre-Dame-des-Tranchees ; they had 
gone on digging and strengthening the place, and when our 
men took over the ground they continued the fortifications, 
so that it was a model of defensive work. But the Ger- 
mans shelled it with method, and it was safer below ground 
than above. In the Orchard young fruit of Hfe fell before 
it had ripened, and I did not like to linger there among the 
apple-trees. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

The taking over of Arras and its neighbourhood down 
from the Vimy Ridge to Souchez, Ablain-St.-Nazaire, La 
Targette, Neuville-St.-Vaast — the very names make me 
feel cold — liberated a complete French army for the defence 
of Verdun, and it was our biggest service to France before 
the battles of the Somme, 

I went into Arras and saw the despoiled beauty of this old 
city of Artois, silent and desolate, in its ruined gardens 
where white statues lay in the rank grass, except when shells 
opened great craters in the Grande Place or tore off a gable 
from one of the Spanish houses in the Petite Place, or came 
crashing into the wreckage of the railway station or knocked 
a few more stones out of the immense walls of the Cathe- 
dral and the Bishop's Palace, through which I wandered, 
gazing up long vistas of white ruin. In the suburbs of St.- 
Laurent and St.-Nicholas the enemy was very close across 
the garden walls, and in the Maison Rouge one had to tip- 
toe and talk in whispers by chinks in the wall (there was a 
rosewood piano in the front room), through which one 
could look at the enemy's sandbags a few yards away. 
Wrinkled old women and wan-faced girls lived still in the 
deep cellars of the city, coming up for a little sunlight when 
the air was quiet, and scuttling down again at the scream of 
a shell. In the dusk small boys roamed the broken streets, 
searched among the litter of stones for shrapnel-bullets for 
games of marbles (I once played such a game in a night at 
Ypres), and cocked a snook at German shells falling a street 
or two away. Our soldiers became familiar with all these 
places, strode through them with that curious matter-of-fact 
way of the British Tommy, who makes himself at home in 
hell-on-earth as though it were the usual thing, and in Sou- 
chez, Neuville-St.-Vaast, Ablain-St.-Nazaire, and on the 
ridge of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette held the lines in spite of 
five-point-nines, aerial torpedoes, every kind of high-explo- 
sive force which tried to blast them out. For miles the 
ground was strewn with "duds" — so that one had to pick 



/ 

THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xxl 

one's way lest one should kick a fuse — and with the litter 
of men's clothes and bodies. 

The months passed. Spring came, and nightingales sang 
in the bushes of old French chateaux and the woodpecker 
laughed in the forest glades; the fields were strewn with 
flowers, and the beauty of France sang a great song in one's 
heart. The wheat grew tall and green. And all this time 
the roads in the British war-zone were becoming more 
crowded with the traffic of men and horses and guns and 
lorries — miles of motor-lorries — as new Divisions came out, 
with belts and harness looking very fresh, making their way 
slowly forward to the firing-lines to learn their lesson like 
others who had gone before them. The billeting areas 
widened, became congested districts from Boulogne to the 
Somme. In Picardy and Artois there was khaki every- 
where. In old market-places of St.-Omer, Bailleul, Be- 
thune, St.-Pol, Hesdin, Fruges, Doullens, our Tommies jos- 
tled among the stalls and booths, 'among the old women 
and girls and blue-coated "poilus," making friends with 
them, learning a wonderful lingua franca, settling down into 
the queer life, which alternated between the trenches and the 
billets, as though it would last for ever. 

The human picture changed. New types of men arrived 
and some of the old stagers departed. The Indian infantry 
also went, and the flat fields behind Neuve Chapelle, where 
the canals cut straight between the rushes, lost those grave, 
sad-eyed, handsome men who seemed like fairy-book princes 
to the French peasants, whose language they had learnt to 
speak with a courtesy, and with soft, simple manners which 
won the friendship of these people. In the winter trenches 
the Indians had shivered ; in the dank mists across the flats 
they had wandered dolefully. They had fought gallantly 
under officers who sacrificed their own lives with noble de- 
votion, but they hated modern shell-fire and all the misery 
of trench-warfare in a wet, cold climate, and were, I think, 
glad to go. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

The Australians came, and for the first time we saw in 
France those bronzed, hatchet-faced, handsome fellows who 
brought a new character of splendid manhood into the med- 
ley of British types. The New Zealanders followed, with 
Maoris among them. The Canadians were adding many 
new battalions to their strength. The South African Scot- 
tish sent more kilts swinging down the roads of war. There 
were Newfoundlanders, West Indians from Barbados. All 
the Empire was sending her men. For what? 

That was the question which we were all asking. How 
and when were these men going to be used? The months 
were dragging on and there was no great attack. There 
had been savage fighting on a small scale up in the Salient at 
St.-Eloi and the Bluff. The Canadians lost ground under a 
sudden storm of shell-fire which flattened out their trenches, 
and retook it after bloody counter-attacks. The Vimy 
Ridge had seen heavy and costly fighting which gained noth- 
ing. All along the line there were raids into the enemy's 
trenches, but it was Red Indian warfare and not the big 
thing. France, after four months of desperate fighting at 
Verdun, asked when the English were going tO' strike. And 
British soldiers who had been in and out of the trenches, 
month after month, seeing heavy losses mount up by the 
usual daily toll, with nothing to show for them, began to 
despair a little. Was it going on for ever like this? This 
existence was intolerable. To sit in a trench and be shelled 
to death — what was the sense of it? At the mess-table 
there were men who found the world all black, the war a 
monstrous horror, an outrage to God and life. I had queer 
conversations with men in dug-outs, in wooden huts under 
shell-fire, in French chateaux inhabited by British officers, 
and heard the secrets of men's souls, their protests against 
the doom that had enchained them, their perplexities, their 
strivings to find some spiritual meaning in the devilish ap- 
pearance of things, their revolt against the brutality and 
senselessness of war, their ironic laughter at the bloody con- 
trast between Christian teaching and Christian practice, 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xxiii 

their blind gropings for some light in all the darkness and 
damnation. 

Then suddenly all changed. The "Big Push" was to come 
at last. Trench warfare was to end, and all this great army 
of ours in France was to get out of its ditches and out into 
the open and strike. Enormous hope took the place of the 
doubts and dolefulness that had begun to possess men of 
melancholy minds. It would be a chance of ending the 
business. At least we had the strength to deliver a smash- 
ing, perhaps a decisive, blow. All our two years of organi- 
sation and training and building up would be put to the 
test, and the men were sure of themselves, confident in the 
new power of our artillery, which was tremendous, without 
a doubt in the spirit of attack which would inspire all our 
battalions. They would fight with the will to win. 

So we came to July i, that day so great in hope, in 
achievement, and in tragedy, and what happened then and 
for three and a half months of fighting days is told in the 
articles now printed in this book. I might have rewritten 
them, polished their style, put in new facts here and there, 
and written a narrative of history with a more considered 
judgment than was possible day by day. But I have thought 
it best to let them stand as they were written at great speed, 
sometimes in utter exhaustion of body and brain, but always 
with the emotion that comes from the hot impress of new 
and tremendous sensations. They may hold some qualities 
that would be lost if I wrote them with more coldness and 
criticism of words and phrases. Even the repetition of in- 
cidents and impressions has some value, for that is true of 
modern warfare — a continual repetition of acts and sounds, 
sights and smells and emotions. 

The method of attack has become a formula — the intense 
preliminary bombardment almost annihilating the enemy's 
front trenches (but not all his dug-outs), the advance across 
No Man's Land under the enemy's curtain-fire, the rush 
over the enemy's broken parapets in the face of machine-gun 
fire, the bombing-out of the dug-outs, the taking of pris- 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

oners. One captured "village" destroyed utterly by shell- 
fire days before the final attack upon its earth-works is ex- 
actly like another in its rubbish-heaps of bricks and wood- 
work. The pictures repeat themselves. Heroic acts — the 
knocking-out of a machine-gun, the bombing down a section 
of trench, the rescue of wounded — repeat themselves also 
through all the battles. In my chronicles these repetitions 
will be found, and the effect of them on the reader's mind 
should be the effect in a faint, far-off way of the real truth. 
Some people imagine, and some critics have written, that 
the war correspondents with the armies in France have been 
"spoon-fed" with documents and facts given to them by 
General Headquarters, from which they write up their des- 
patches. They recognise the same incident, told in different 
style by different correspondents, and say, "Ah, that is how 
it is done!" They are wrong. All that we get from the 
General Staff are the brief bulletins of the various army 
corps, a line or two of hard news about the capture or loss 
of this or that trench, such as appears afterwards in the 
official communiques. For all the details of an action we 
have to rely upon our own efforts in the actual theatre of 
operations day by day, seeing as much of the battle as it is 
possible to see ( sometimes one can see everything and some- 
times nothing but smoke and bursting shells), getting into 
the swirl and traffic of the battlefields, talking to the walk- 
ing wounded and prisoners, the men going in and the men 
coming out, going to headquarters of brigades, divisions, 
and corps for exact information as to the progress of the 
battle from the generals and officers directing the opera- 
tions, and getting into touch as soon as possible with the 
battalions actually engaged. All this is not as easy as it 
sounds. It is not done without fatigue, and mental as well 
as physical strain. It takes one into unpleasant places from 
which one is glad and lucky to get back. But we have full 
facilities for seeing and knowing the truth of things, and 
see more and know more of the whole battle-line than is 
possible even to Divisional Generals and other officers in 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xxv 

high command. For we have a pass enabling us to go to 
any part of the front at any time and get the facts and 
points of view from every class and rank, from the trenches 
to G.H.Q. Because the correspondents sometimes tell the 
same stories it is because we tell them to each other, not 
believing in professional rivalry in a war of this greatness. 
Our only limitations in truth-telling are those of our own 
vision, skill, and conscience under the discipline of the mili- 
tary censorship. I have no personal quarrel with that cen- 
sorship — though all censorship is hateful. After many al- 
terations in method and principle it was exercised through- 
out the battles of the Somme (and for months before that, 
when there was no conspiracy of silence but only the lack 
of great events to chronicle) with a really broad-minded 
policy of allowing the British people to know the facts 
about their fighting men save those which would give the 
enemy a chance of spoiling our plans or hurting us. If 
there had been no censorship at all it would be impossible 
for an honourable correspondent to tell some things within 
his knowledge — our exact losses in a certain action, failures 
at this or that point of the line, tactical blunders which 
might have been made here or there, the disposition or 
movement of troops, the positions of batteries and observa- 
tion-posts. 

These are things which the enemy must not know. So 
I do not think that during the whole of the Somme fighting 
there was more than a line or two taken out of one or the 
other of my despatches, and with the exception of those 
words they are printed as they were written. They tell the 
truth. There is not one word, I vow, of conscious falsehood 
in them. But they do not tell all the truth. I have had to 
spare the feelings of men and women who have sons and 
husbands still fighting in France. I have not told all there 
is to tell about the agonies of this war, nor given in full real- 
ism the horrors that are inevitable in such fighting. It is 
perhaps better not to do so, here and now, although it is a 
moral cowardice which makes many people shut their eyes 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

to the shambles, comforting their souls with fine phrases 
about the beauty of sacrifice. 

One thing hurt me badly in writing my accounts and 
hurts me still. For military reasons I have not been permit- 
ted to give the names of all the troops engaged from day 
to day, but only a few names allowed by our Intelligence. 
The Germans were counting up our divisions, reckoning 
how many men we had in reserve, how many were against 
them in the lines. It was not for us to help them in this 
arithmetic. But it is hard on the men and on their people. 
They do not get that immediate fame and honour for their 
regiments which they have earned by the splendour of their 
courage and achievements. It is not my fault, for I would 
give all their names if I could, and tire out my wrist in 
praising them if it could give them a little spark of pleasure 
and pride. But, after all, each man who fought on the 
Somme shares the general honour which belongs to all of 
them. 

The correspondents with the armies in the field do not 
prophesy or criticise or sit in judgment. That is not within 
our orders, and belongs to the liberty of writing-men who 
sit at home with their maps and the official bulletins and our 
despatches from the front. "There is not one of these in- 
dustrious men," writes a critic of our work, "who has had 
the experience to form a military judgment." Well, that is 
as may be, though we have had more experience of war than 
most men will have, I think, for another fifty years. In our 
own mess we are critics and prophets and judges, and I 
fancy we could give a point or two to the experts at home, 
and, with luck, later on, may do so. Now in the war-zone 
we are but chroniclers of the fighting day by day, trying to 
get the facts as fully as possible and putting them down as 
clearly as they appear out of the turmoil of battle. Even 
now in this Introduction I shall attempt no summing up of 
the results achieved by these battles of the Somme, except 
by saying that by enormous sacrifices, by individual cour- 
age beyond the normal laws of human nature as I thought 



THE COMING OF THE NEW ARMIES xxvii 

I knew them once, by great efficiency in organisation and a 
resolute purpose not checked or weakened by any obstacles, 
our troops broke through positions which the enemy be- 
lieved, and had a right to believe, impregnable, carried by 
assault his first, second, and third systems of trenches, drew 
in his reserves with many guns and men from Verdun so 
that the French could counter-attack with brilliant success, 
and inflicted upon the enemy heavy and irreparable loss 
which, as we hope and believe, though with imperfect knowl- 
edge, he cannot afford without weakening his line of de- 
fence on our own front and facing our Allies. These ham- 
mer-strokes were not decisive in victory. I believe that the 
German strength of resistance and attack is still great. I 
do not see a quick ending of this most horrible massacre in 
the fields of Europe. But it was only the weather which 
stopped for a time our forward progress when at the end 
of October the rain-storms made all the battlefield a swamp 
and obscured the observation which our men had won by 
three months and a half of uphill fighting and desperate 
strife. Even then in the mud they took many more prison- 
ers in heavy fighting up by the Stuff and Schwaben Redoubts 
which the enemy hated us to hold because of their domi- 
nating ground to the north of Thiepval — and then in the 
fog made that great, audacious attack on Beaumont-Hamel, 
■v^diich captured one of the strongest positions against our 
own front with over 6,000 prisoners. Of that last attack I 
saw nothing, being home on sick-leave. 

I must say a word or two about the Tanks. After the 
first great surprise, the exaltation of spirits caused by these 
new motor-monsters, there followed a disappointment in the 
public mind and even among our soldiers. Some of the in- 
fantry, poor lads, hoped that at last the enemy's deadly ma- 
chine-gun fire would be killed by these things and that in 
future infantry attacks would be a walk-over behind the 
Tanks. That was hoping too much. It would require thou- 
sands of Tanks to do that and we had only a few. But I 
have the record of what each Tank did in action up to the 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

middle of October, and it leaves no room for doubt that, 
balancing success with failure, these new machines of war 
have justified their inventors a hundred-fold. They saved 
many casualties at certain points of the line and helped to 
gain many important positions, as at Thiepval and Flers, 
Courcelette and Martinpuich. If we had enough of them 
— and it would be a big number — trench warfare would go 
for ever and machine-gun redoubts would lose their terror. 
The battles of the Somme — as we call this fighting, curi- 
ously, for on our side it is not very near the Somme — are 
not yet finished. As I write these words it is only a lull 
which seems to end them, and does end at least the first 
phase with which I deal in the pages that follow. They are 
pages written on the evenings of battle hastily and some- 
times feverishly, after days of intense experience and tiring 
sensation. Yet there is in them and through them one pas- 
sionate purpose. It is to reveal to our people and the world 
the high valour, the self-sacrificing discipline of soul, the 
supreme endurance of those men of ours who fought and 
suffered great agonies and died, and if not killed or 
wounded, came out to rest a little while and fight again, 
not liking it, you understand — hating it like the hell it is — 
but doing their duty, with a great and glorious devotion, 
according to the light that is in them. 



THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



I 

THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 

I 

With the British Armies in the Field, July i, 1916 

The attack which was launched to-day against the German 
Hnes on a 20-mile front began well. It is not yet a victory, 
for victory comes at the end of a battle, and this is only a 
beginning. But our troops, fighting with very splendid 
valour, have swept across the enemy's front trenches along 
a great part of the line of attack, and have captured villages 
and strongholds which the Germans have long held against 
us. They are fighting their way forward not easily but 
doggedly. Many hundreds of the enemy are prisoners in 
our hands. His dead lie thick in the track of our regiments. 

And so, after the first day of battle, we may say: It is, 
on balance, a good day for England and France. It is a day 
of promise in this war, in which the blood of brave men is 
poured out upon the sodden fields of Europe. 

For nearly a week now we have been bombarding the 
enemy's lines from the Yser to the Somme. Those of us 
who have watched this bombardment knew the meaning of 
it. We knew that it was the preparation for this attack. 
All those raids of the week which I have recorded from day 
to day w^ere but leading to a greater raid when not hun- 
dreds of men but hundreds of thousands would leave their 
trenches and go forward in a great assault. 

We had to keep the secret, to close our lips tight, to write 
vague words lest the enemy should get a hint too soon, and 
the strain was great upon us and the suspense an ordeal to 

21 



82 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the nerves, because as the hours went by they drew nearer 
to the time when great masses of our men, those splendid 
young men who have gone marching along the roads of 
France, would be sent into the open, out of the ditches 
where they got cover from the German fire. 

This secret was foreshadowed by many signs. Travel- 
ling along the roads we saw new guns arriving — heavy 
guns and field-guns, week after week. We were building 
up a great weight of metal. 

Passing them, men raised their eyebrows and smiled 
grimly. ... A tide of men flowed in from the ports of 
France — new men of new divisions. They passed to some 
part of the front, disappeared for a while, were met again 
in fields and billets, looking harder, having stories to tell of 
trench life and raids. 

The Army was growing. There was a mass of men here 
in France, and some day they would be ready, trained 
enough, hard enough, to strike a big blow. 

A week or two ago the whisper passed, "We're going to 
attack." But no more than that, except behind closed doors 
of the mess-room. Somehow by the look on men's faces, 
by their silences and thought fulness, one could guess that 
something was to happen. 

There was a thrill in the air, a thrill from the pulse of 
men who know the meaning of attack. Would it be in 
June or July ? . . . The fields of France were very beauti- 
ful this June. There were roses in the gardens of old 
French chateaux. Poppies put a flame of colour in the 
fields, close up to the trenches, and there were long stretches 
of gold across the countryside. A pity that all this should 
be spoilt by the pest of war. 

So some of us thought, but not many soldiers. After the 
misery of a wet winter and the expectations of the spring 
they were keen to get out of the trenches again. All their 
training led up to that. The spirit of the men was for an 
assault across the open, and they were confident in the new- 
power of our guns. . . . 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 23 

The guns spoke one morning last week with a louder 
voice than has yet been heard upon the front, and as they 
crashed out we knew that it was the signal for the new 
attack. Their fire increased in intensity, covering raids at 
many points of the line, until at last all things were ready 
for the biggest raid. 



The scene of the battlefields at night was of terrible 
beauty. I motored out to it from a town behind the lines, 
where through their darkened windows French citizens 
watched the illumination of the sky, throbbing and flashing 
to distant shellfire. Behind the lines the villages were 
asleep, without the twinkle of a lamp in any window. The 
shadow forms of sentries paced up and down outside the 
stone archways of old French houses. 

Here and there on the roads a lantern waved to and fro, 
and its rays gleamed upon the long bayonet and steel casque 
of a French Territorial, and upon the bronzed face of an 
English soldier, who came forward to stare closely at a 
piece of paper which allowed a man to gO' into the fires of 
hell up there. It was an English voice that gave the first 
challenge, and then called out "Good-night" with a strange 
and unofficial friendliness as a greeting to men who were 
going towards the guns. 

The fields on the edge of the battle of guns were very 
peaceful. A faint breeze stirred the tall wheat, above which 
there floated a milky light transfusing the darkness. The 
poppy fields still glowed redly, and there was a glint of gold 
from long stretches of mustard flower. Beyond, the woods 
stood black against the sky above little hollows where British 
soldiers were encamped. 

There by the light of candles which gave a rose-colour to 
the painted canvas boys were writing letters home before 
lying down to sleep. Some horsemen were moving down a 



24 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

valley road. Further off a long column of black lorries 
passed. It was the food of the guns going forward. 

A mile or two more, a challenge or two more, and then a 
halt by the roadside. It was a road which led straight into 
the central fires of one great battlefield in a battle line of 
80 miles or more. A small corner of the front, yet in itself 
a broad and far-stretching panorama of our gunfire on this 
night of bombardment. 

I stood with a few officers in the centre of a crescent 
sweeping round from Auchonvillers, Thiepval, La Boisselle, 
and Fricourt, to Bray, on the Somme, at the southern end 
of the curve. Here in this beetroot field on high ground, 
we stood watching one of the greatest artillery battles in 
which British gunners have been engaged. Up to that night 
the greatest. 

The night sky, very calm and moist, with low-lying 
clouds not stirred by wind, was rent with incessant flashes 
of light as shells of every calibre burst and scattered. Out 
of the black ridges and woods in front of us came explo- 
sions of white fire, as though the earth had opened and let 
loose its inner heat. They came up with a burst of intense 
brilliance, which spread along a hundred yards of ground 
and then vanished abruptly behind the black curtain of the 
night. It was the work of high explosives and heavy trench 
mortars falling in the German lines. Over Thiepval and 
La Boisselle there were rapid flashes of bursting shrapnel 
shells, and these points of flame stabbed the sky along the 
whole battle front. 

From the German lines rockets were rising, continually. 
They rose high and their star-shells remained suspended for 
half a minute with an intense brightness. While the light 
lasted it cut out the black outline of the trees and broken 
roofs, and revealed heavy white smoke-clouds rolling over 
the enemy's positions. 

They were mostly white lights, but at one place red 
rockets went up. They were signals of distress, perhaps, 
from German infantry calling to their guns. It was in the 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 25 

zone of these red signals, over towards Ovillers, that our 
fire for a time was most fierce, so that sheets of flame waved 
to and fro as though fanned by a furious wind. All the 
time along the German line red lights ran up and down 
like little red dancing devils. 

I cannot tell what they were, unless they were some other 
kind of signalling, or the bursting of rifle-grenades. Some- 
times for thirty seconds or so the firing ceased, and dark- 
ness, very black and velvety, blotted out everything and 
restored the world to peace. Then suddenly, at one point 
or another, the earth seemed to open to furnace fires. 
Down by Bray, southwards, there was one of these violent 
shocks of light, and then a moment later another, by 
Auchonvilliers to the north. 

And once again the infernal fires began, flashing, flicker- 
ing, running along a ridge with a swift tongue of flame, 
tossing burning feathers above rosy smoke-clouds, concen- 
trating into one bonfire of bursting shells over Fricourt 
and Thiepval upon which our batteries always concentrated. 



There was one curious phenomenon. It was the silence 
of all the artillery. By some atmospheric condition of 
moisture or wind (though the night was calm), or by the 
configuration of the ground, which made pockets into which 
the sound fell, there was no great uproar, such as I have 
heard scores of times in smaller bombardments than this. 

It was all muffled. Even our own batteries did not crash 
out with any startling thunder, though I could hear the rush 
of big shells, like great birds in flight. Now and then there 
was a series of loud strokes, an urgent knocking at the doors 
of night. And now and again there was a dull, heavy thun- 
der-clap, followed by a long rumble, which made me think 
that mines were being blown further up the line. 

But for the most part it was curiously quiet and low- 



26 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

toned, and somehow this muffled artillery gave one a greater 
sense of aw fulness and of deadly work. 

Along all this stretch of the battle-front there was no sign 
of men. It was all inhuman, the work of impersonal pow- 
ers, and man himself was in hiding from these great forces 
of destruction. So I thought, peering through the dark- 
ness, over the beetroots and the wheat. 

But a little later I heard the steady tramp of many feet 
and the thud of horses' hoofs walking slowly, and the grind- 
ing of wheels in the ruts. Shadow forms came up out of 
the dark tunnel below the trees, the black figures of mounted 
officers, followed by a battalion marching with their trans- 
port. I could not see the faces of the men, but by the shape 
of their forms could see that they wore their steel helmets 
and their fighting kit. They were heavily laden with their 
packs, but they were marching at a smart, swinging pace, 
and as they came along were singing cheerily. 

They were singing some music-hall tune, with a lilt in it, 
as they marched towards the lights of all the shells up there 
in the places of death. Some of them were blowing mouth- 
organs and others were whistling. I watched them pass — 
all these tall boys of a North Country regiment, and some- 
thing of their spirit seemed to come out of the dark mass 
of their moving bodies and thrill the air. They were going 
up to those places without faltering, without a backward 
look and singing — dear, splendid men. 

I saw other men on the march, and some of them were 
whistling the "Marseillaise," though they were English sol- 
diers. Others were gossiping quietly as they walked and 
once the light of bursting shells played all down the line of 
their faces — hard, clean-shaven, bronzed English faces, with 
the eyes of youth there staring up at the battle-fires and 
unafraid. 

A young officer walking at the head of his platoon called 
out a cheery good-night to me. It was a greeting in the 
darkness from one of those gallant boys who lead their 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 27 

men out of the trenches without much thought of self in that 
moment of sacrifice. 

In the camps the lights were out and the tents were dark. 
The soldiers who had been writing letters home had sent 
their love and gone to sleep. But the shell fire never ceased 
all night. 



A staff officer had whispered a secret to us at midnight in 
a little room, when the door was shut and the window 
closed. Even then they were words which could be only 
whispered, and to men of trust. 

*'The attack will be made this morning at 7.30." 

So all had gone well, and there was to be no hitch. The 
preliminary bombardments had done their work with the 
enemy's wire and earthworks. All the organisation for 
attack had been done, and the men were ready in their as- 
sembly trenches waiting for the words which would hold 
all their fate. 

There was a silence in the room where a dozen officers 
heard the words — men who were to be lookers-on and who 
would not have to leave a trench up there on the battlefields 
when the little hand of a wrist watch said "It is now." 

The great and solemn meaning of next day's dawn made 
the air seem oppressive, and our hearts beat jumpily for 
just a moment. There would be no sleep for all those men 
crowded in the narrow trenches on the north of the Somme. 
God give them courage in the morning. . , . 

The dawn came with a great beauty. There was a pale 
blue sky flecked with white wisps of cloud. But it was cold 
and over all the fields there was a floating mist which rose 
up from the moist earth and lay heavily upon the ridges, 
so that the horizon was obscured. As soon as hght came 
there was activity in the place where I was behind the lines. 
A body of French engineers, all blue from casque to puttee, 
and laden with their field packs, marched along with a steady 



g8 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

tramp, their grave, grim faces turned towards the front. 
British staff officers came motoring swiftly by and despatch 
riders mounted their motor cycles and scurried away 
through the market cart§ of French peasants to the open 
roads. French sentries and French soldiers in reserve raised 
their hands to the salute as our officers passed. 

Each man among them guessed that it was England's day, 
and that the British Army was out for attack. It was the 
spirit of France saluting their comrades in arms when the 
oldest "poilu" there raised a wrinkled hand to his helmet 
and said to an English soldier, "Bonne chance, mon 
camarade!" 

Along the roads towards the battlefields there was no 
movement of troops. For a few miles there were quiet 
fields, where cattle grazed and where the wheat grew green 
and tall in the white mist. The larks were singing high in 
the first glinting sunshine of the day above the haze. And 
another kind of bird came soaring overhead. 

It was one of our monoplanes, which flew steadily towards 
the lines, a herald of the battle. In distant hollows there 
were masses of limber, and artillery horses hobbled in lines. 

The battle line came into view, the long sweep of country 
stretching southwards to the Somme. Above the lines 
beyond Bray, looking towards the German trenches, was a 
great cluster of kite balloons. They were poised very high, 
held steady by the air pockets on their ropes, and their bas- 
kets, where the artillery observers sat, caught the rays of 
the sun. I counted seventeen of them, the largest group 
that has ever been seen along our front ; but I could see no 
enemy balloons opposite them. It seemed that we had more 
eyes than they, but to-day theirs have been staring out of 
the veil of the mist. 



We went farther forward to the guns, and stood on the 
same high field where we had watched the night bombard- 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 29 

ment. The panorama of battle was spread around us, and 
the noise of battle swept about us in great tornadoes. I 
have said that in the night one was startled by the curious 
quietude of the guns, by that queer muffled effect of so great 
an artillery. But now on the morning battle this phenom- 
enon, which I do not understand, no longer existed. There 
was one continual roar of guns which beat the air with 
great waves and shocks of sound, prodigious and over- 
whelming. 

The full power of our artillery was let loose at about 6 
o'clock this morning. Nothing like it has ever been seen or 
heard upon our front before, and all the preliminary bom- 
bardment, great as it was, seemed insignificant to this. I do 
not know how many batteries we have along this battle line 
or upon the section of the line which I could see, but the 
guns seemed crowded in vast numbers of every calibre, and 
the concentration of their fire was terrific in its intensity. 

For a time I could see nothing through the low-lying mist 
and heavy smoke-clouds which mingled with the mist, and 
stood like a blind man, only listening. It was a wonderful 
thing which came to my ears. Shells were rushing through 
the air as though all the trains in the world had leapt their 
rails and were driving at express speed through endless 
tunnels in which they met each other with frightful col- 
lisions. 

Some of these shells firing from batteries not far from 
where I stood ripped the sky with a high, tearing note. 
Other shells whistled with that strange, gobbling, sibilant 
cry which makes one's bowels turn cold. Through the mist 
and the smoke there came sharp, loud, insistent knocks, as 
separate batteries fired salvoes, and great clangorous strokes, 
as of iron doors banged suddenly, and the tattoo of the 
light field guns playing the drums of death. 

The mist was shifting and dissolving. The tall tower of 
Albert Cathedral appeared suddenly through the veil, and 
the sun shone full for a few seconds on the golden Virgin 
and the Babe, which she held head-downwards above all this 



80 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

tumult as a peace-offering to men. The broken roofs of 
the town gleamed white, and the two tall chimneys to the 
left stood black and sharp against the pale blue of the sky, 
into which dirty smoke drifted above the whiter clouds. 

I could see now as well as hear. I could see our shells 
falling upon the German lines by Thiepval and La Boiselle 
and further by Mametz, and southwards over Fricourt. 
High explosives were tossing up great vomits of black 
smoke and earth all along the ridges. Shrapnel was pour- 
ing upon these places, and leaving curly white clouds, which 
clung to the ground. 

Below there was the flash of many batteries like Morse 
code signals by stabs of flame. The enemy was being 
blasted by a hurricane of fire. I found it in my heart to 
pity the poor devils who were there, and yet was filled by a 
strange and awful exultation because this was the work of 
our guns, and because it was England's day. 

Over my head came a flight of six aeroplanes, led by a 
single monoplane, which steered steadily towards the enemy. 
The sky was deeply blue above them, and when the sun 
caught their wings they were as beautiful and delicate as 
butterflies. But they were carrying death with them, and 
were out to bomb the enemy's batteries and to drop their 
explosives into masses of men behind the German lines. 

Farther away a German plane was up. Our anti-aircraft 
guns were searching for him with their shells which dotted 
the sky with snowballs. 

Every five minutes or so a single gun fired a round. It 
spoke with a voice I knew, the deep, gruff voice of old 
"Grandmother," one of our 15-inch guns, which carries a 
shell large enough to smash a cathedral with one enormous 
burst. I could follow the journey of the shell by listening 
to its rush through space. Seconds later there was the 
distant thud of its explosion. 

Troops were moving forward to the attack from behind 
the lines. It was nearly 7.30. All the officers about me 
kept glancing at their wrist-watches. We did not speak 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 31 

much then, but stared silently at the smoke and mist which 
floated and banked along our lines. There, hidden, were 
our men. They, too, would be looking at their wrist- 
watches. 

The minutes were passing very quickly — as quickly as 
men's lives pass when they look back upon the years. An 
officer near me turned away, and there was a look of sharp 
pain in his eyes. We were only lookers-on. The other men, 
our friends, the splendid Youth that we have passed on the 
roads of France, were about to do this job. Good luck go 
with them! Men were muttering such wishes in their 
hearts. 



It was 7.30. Our watches told us that, but nothing else. 
The guns had lifted and were firing behind the enemy's first 
lines, but there was no sudden hush for the moment of 
attack. The barrage by our guns seemed as great as the first 
bombardment. For ten minutes or so before this time a 
new sound had come into the general thunder of artillery. 
It was like the "rafale" of the French soixante-quinze, very 
rapid, with distant and separate strokes, but louder than 
the noise of field-guns. They were our trench-mortars at 
work, along the whole length of the line before me. 

It was 7.30. The moment for the attack had come. 
Clouds of smoke had been liberated to form a screen for the 
infantry, and hid the whole line. The only men I could 
see were those in reserve, winding along a road by some 
trees which led up to the attacking points. They had their 
backs turned, as they marched very slowly and steadily 
forward. I could not tell who they were, though I had 
passed some of them on the road a day or two before. But, 
whoever they were, English, Irish or Welsh, I watched them 
until most had disappeared from sight behind a clump of 
trees. In a little while they would be fighting, and would 
need all their courage. 



32 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

At a minute after 7.30 there came through the rolling 
smoke-clouds a rushing sound. It was the noise of rifle 
fire and machine-guns. The men were out of their trenches, 
and the attack had begun. The enemy was barraging our 
lines. 

7 

The country chosen for our main attack to-day stretches 
from the Somme for some 20 miles northwards. The 
French were to operate on our immediate right. It is very 
different country from Flanders, with its swamps and flats, 
and from the Loos battlefields, with their dreary plain 
pimpled by slack heaps. 

It is a sweet and pleasant country, with wooded hills and 
little valleys along the river beds of the Ancre and the 
Somme, and fertile meadow-lands and stretches of wood- 
land, where soldiers and guns may get good cover. "A 
clean country," said one of our Generals, when he first went 
to it from the northern war zone. 

It seemed very queer to go there first, after a knowledge 
of war in the Ypres salient, where there is seldom view of 
the enemy's lines from any rising ground — except Kemmel 
Hill and Observatory Ridge — and where certainly one can- 
not walk on the skyline in full view of German earthworks 
2,000 yards away. 

But at Hebuterne, which the French captured after des- 
perate fighting, and at Auchonvilliers (opposite Beaumont), 
and on the high ground by the ruined city of Albert, look- 
ing over to Fricourt and Mametz, and further south on the 
Somme, looking towards the little German stronghold at 
Curlu, beyond the marshes, one could see very clearly and 
with a strange, unreal sense of safety. 

I saw a German sentry pacing the village street of Curlu, 
and went within 20 paces of his outposts. Occasionally one 
could stare through one's glasses at German working parties 
just beyond sniping range round Beaumont and Fricourt, 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 33 

and to the left of Fricourt the Crucifix between its seven 
trees seemed very near as one looked at it in the German 
lines. 

Below this Calvary was the Tambour and the Bois Fran- 
gais, where not a week passed without a mine being blown 
on one side or the other, so that the ground was a great 
upheaval of mingling mine-craters and tumbled earth, which 
but halT-covered the dead bodies of men. 

It was difficult ground in front of us. The enemy was 
strong in his defences. In the clumps of woodland beside 
the ruined villages he hid many machine-guns and trench 
mortars, and each ruined house in each village was part of a 
fortified stronghold difficult to capture by direct assault. It 
was here, however, and with good hopes of success that our 
men attacked to-day, working eastwards across the Ancre 
and northwards up from the Somme. 



8 

At the end of this day's fighting it is still too soon to 
give a clear narrative of the battle. Behind the veil of 
smoke which hides our men there were many different ac- 
tions taking place, and the messages that come back at the 
peril of men's lives and by the great gallantry of our sig- 
nallers and runners give but glimpses of the progress of 
our men and of their hard fighting. 

I have seen the wounded who have come out of the battle, 
and the prisoners brought down in batches, but even they 
can give only confused accounts of fighting in some single 
sector of the line which comes within their own experience. 

At first, it is certain, there was not much difficulty in tak- 
ing the enemy's first line trenches along the greater part of 
the country attacked. Our bombardment had done great 
damage, and had smashed down the enemy's wire and flat- 
tened his parapets. When our men left their assembly 
trenches and swept forward, cheering, they encountered no 



34 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

great resistance from German soldiers, who had been hid- 
ing in their dug-outs under our storm of shells. 

Many of these dug-outs were blown in and filled with 
dead, but out of others which had not been flung to pieces 
by high explosives crept dazed and deafened men who held 
their hands up and bowed their heads. Some of them in 
one part of the line came out of their shelters as soon as our 
guns lifted, and met our soldiers half-way, with signs of 
surrender. 

They were collected and sent back under guard, while 
the attacking columns passed on to the second and third 
lines in the network of trenches, and then if they could get 
through them to the fortified ruins behind. 

But the fortunes of war vary in different places, as I 
know from the advance of troops, including the South 
Staffords, the Manchesters, and the Gordons. In crossing 
the first line of trench the South Staffordshire men had a 
comparatively easy time, with hardly any casualties, gath- 
ering up Germans who surrendered easily. The enemy's 
artillery fire did not touch them seriously, and both they and 
the Manchesters had very great luck. 

But the Gordons fared differently. These keen fighting 
men rushed forward with great enthusiasm until they 
reached one end of the village of Mametz, and then quite 
suddenly they were faced by rapid machine-gun fire and a 
storm of bombs. The Germans held a trench called Danzig- 
avenue on the ridge where Mametz stands, and defended it 
with desperate courage. The Gordons flung themselves 
upon this position, and had some difficulty in clearing it of 
the enemy. At the end of the day Mametz remained in 
our hands. 

It was these fortified villages which gave our men greatest 
trouble, for the German troops defended them with real 
courage, and worked their machine-guns from hidden em- 
placements with skill and determination. 

Fricourt is, I believe, still holding out (its capture has 
since been officially reported), though our men have forced 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 35 

their way on both sides of it, so that it is partly surrounded. 
Montauban, to the north-east of Mametz, was captured 
early in the day, and we also gained the strong point at 
Serre, until the Germans made a somewhat heavy counter- 
attack, and succeeded in driving out our troops. 

Beaumont-Hamel was not in our hands at the end of the 
day, but here again our men are fighting on both sides of 
it. The woods and village of Thiepval, which I had watched 
under terrific shell-fire in our preliminary bombardments, 
was one point of our first attack, and our troops swept from 
one end of the village to the other, and out beyond to a 
new objective. 

They were too quick to get on, it seems, for a considerable 
number of Germans remained in the dug-outs, and when the 
British soldiers went past them they came out of their hid- 
ing-places and became a fighting force again. Farther north 
our infantry attacked both sides of the Gommecourt salient 
with the greatest possible valour. 

That is my latest knowledge, writing at midnight on the 
first day of July, which leaves our men beyond the German 
front lines in many places, and penetrating to the country 
behind like arrow-heads between the enemy's strongholds. 



In the afternoon I saw the first batches of prisoners 
brought in. In parties of 50 to 100 they came down, 
guarded by men of the Border Regiment, through the little 
French hamlets close behind the fighting-lines, where peas- 
ants stood in their doorways watching these first-fruits of 
victory. 

They were damaged fruit, some of these poor wretches, 
wounded and nerve-shaken in the great bombardment. Most 
of them belonged to the 109th and iioth Regiments of the 
14th Reserve Corps, and they seemed to be a mixed lot of 
Prussians and Bavarians. On the whole, they were tall, 



36 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

strong fellows, and there were striking faces among them, 
of men higher than the peasant type, and thoughtful. But 
they were very haggard and worn and dirty. 

Over the barbed wire which had been stretched across a 
farmyard, in the shadow of an old French church, I spoke 
to some of them. To one man especially, who answered all 
my questions with a kind of patient sadness. He told me 
that most of his comrades and himself had been without 
food and water for several days, as our intense fire made it 
impossible to get supplies up the communication-trenches. 

About the bombardment he raised his hands and eyes a 
moment — eyes full of a remembered horror — and said, "Es 
war schrecklich" (It was horrible). Most of the officers had 
remained in the second line, but the others had been killed, 
he thought. His own brother had been killed, and in Baden 
his mother and sisters would weep when they heard. But 
he was glad to be a prisoner, out of the war at last, which 
would last much longer. 

A new column of prisoners was being brought down, and 
suddenly the man turned and uttered an exclamation with 
a look of surprise and awe. 

"Ach, da ist ein Hauptmann !" He recognised an officer 
among these new prisoners, and it seemed clearly a surpris- 
ing thing to him that one of the great caste should be in this 
plight, should suffer as he had suffered. 

Some of his fellow-prisoners lay on the ground all bloody 
and bandaged. One of them seemed about to die. But the 
English soldiers gave them water, and one of our officers 
emptied his cigarette-case and gave them all he had to 
smoke. 

Other men were coming back from the fields of fire, glad 
also to be back behind the line. They were our wounded, 
who came in very quickly after the first attack to the cas- 
ualty clearing stations close to the lines, but beyond the 
reach of shell-fire. Many of them were lightly wounded in 
the hands and feet, and sometimes 50 or more were on one 



THE HISTORIC FIRST OF JULY 37 

lorry, which had taken up ammunition and was now bring- 
ing back the casualties. 

They were wonderful men. So wonderful in their gaiety 
and courage that one's heart melted at the sight of them. 
They were all grinning as though they had come from a 
"jolly" in which they had been bumped a little. There was 
a look of pride in their eyes as they came driving down like 
wounded knights from a tourney. 

They had gone through the job with honour, and have 
come out with their lives, and the world was good and beau- 
tiful again, in this warm sun, in these snug French villages, 
where peasant men and women waved hands to them, and in 
these fields of scarlet and gold and green. 

The men who were going up to the battle grinned back 
at those who were coming out. One could not see the faces 
of the lying-down cases, only the soles of their boots as 
they passed ; but the laughing men on the lorries — some of 
them stripped to the waist and bandaged roughly — seemed 
to rob war of some of its horror, and the spirit of our 
British soldiers shows bright along the roads of France, so 
that the very sun seems to get some of its gold from these 
men's hearts. 

To-night the guns are at work again, and the sky flushes 
as the shells burst over there where our men are fighting. 



II 

THE FIRST CHARGE 



I 

July 2 
It is possible now to get something like a clear idea of the 
fighting which began yesterday morning at 7.30, when the 
furious tempest of our guns passed farther over the German 
lines and our infantry left their trenches for the great 
adventure. 

The battle goes on, with success to our arms. Fricourt, 
partly surrounded yesterday (by the 21st Division), was 
taken by assault to-day, and a German counter-attack upon 
Montauban was repulsed with losses that tore gaps into the 
enemy's ranks. Prisoners come tramping down in batches, 
weary, worn men, who have the gallantry to praise our own 
infantry and remember with a shudder the violence of our 
gunfire. 

Wounded men who are coming out of the fighting-lines 
ask one question, "How are we doing?" Men suffering 
great pain have a smile in their eyes when the answer comes, 
"We are doing well." The spirit of our men is so high 
that it is certain we shall gain further ground, however 
great the cost. 

The ground we have already gained was won by men who 
fought to win, and who went "all out," as they say, with a 
fierce enthusiasm to carry their objective, quickly and ut- 
terly and cleanly. This wonderful spirit of the men is 
praised by all their officers as a kind of new revelation, 
though they saw them in trench life and in hard times. 

"They went across toppingly," said a wounded boy of the 

38 



THE FIRST CHARGE 39 

West Yorkshires, who was in the first attack on Fricourt. 
"The fellows were glorious," said another young officer who 
could hardly speak for the pain in his left shoulder, where 
a piece of shell struck him down in Mametz Wood. "Won- 
derful chaps !" said a lieutenant of the Manchesters. "They 
went cheering through machine-gun fire as though it were 
just the splashing of rain. . . . They beat everything for 
real pluck." 

They beat everything for pluck except their own officers, 
who, as usual, led their men forward without a thought of 
their own risks. 



The attack on Montauban was one of our best successes 
yesterday. The men were mainly Lancashire troops (of the 
Manchester Regiment) supported by men of the Home 
Counties, including those of Surrey, Kent, Essex, Bedford, 
and Norfolk. They advanced in splendid order straight for 
their objective, swept over the German trenches, and cap- 
tured large numbers of prisoners, without great loss to 
themselves. 

Their commanding officers were anxious about a German 
strong point called the Briqueterie, or brickfield, which had 
been full of machine-guns and minenwerfers, and the orig- 
inal intention was to pass this without a direct attempt to 
take it. 

But the position was found to be utterly destroyed by our 
bombardment, and a party of men (the Liverpools) were 
detached to seize it, which they did with comparative ease. 
The remainder of the men in those battalions went on to the 
ruined village of Montauban and, in spite of spasmodic 
machine-gun fire from some of the broken houses, carried it 
in one great flood of invasion. 

Large numbers of Germans were taking cover in dug- 
outs and cellars, but as soon as our men entered they came 
up into the open and surrendered. Many of them were so 



40 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

cowed by the great bombardment they had suffered and by 
the waves of men that swept into their stronghold that they 
fell upon their knees and begged most piteously for mercy, 
which was granted to them. 

The loss of Montauban was serious to the enemy, and 
they prepared a counter-attack, which was launched this 
morning, at 3 o'clock, at a strength of two regiments. Our 
men were expecting this and had organised their defence. 
The Germans came on in close order, very bravely, rank 
after rank advancing over the dead and wounded bodies 
of their comrades, who were caught by our machine-gun 
fire and rifle-fire and mown down. Only a few men were 
able to enter our trenches, and these died. Montauban re- 
mains in our hands, and so far the enemy has not attempted 
another attack. 



Our line winds round the village In a sharp salient which 
drops south-eastwards to Mametz, which is full of German 
dead and wounded, who are being found in the cellars and 
taken back to our hospitals. It was in the taking of Mametz 
that some of the Gordons suffered heavily. With English 
troops they advanced across the open with sloped arms. 
There was very little shell-fire and not a rifle-shot came 
from the enemy's broken trenches. 

"Suddenly," says one of their officers, "a machine-gun 
opened fire upon us point-blank, and caught us in the face. 
I shouted to my men to advance at the double, and we ran 
forward through a perfect stream of shattering bullets. 
Many of my poor boys dropped, and then I fell and knew 
nothing more for a while. But afterwards I heard that we 
had taken Mametz, and hold it still. . . . My Gordons were 
fine, but we had bad luck." 

It was the fire of German machine-guns which was most 
trying to our men. Again and again soldiers have told me 
to-day that the hard time came when these bullets began to 



THE FIRST CHARGE 41 

play upon them. In spite of our enormous bombardment 
there remained here and there, even in a front-Hne trench, a 
machine-gun emplacement so strongly built with steel gird- 
ers and concrete cover that it had defied our high explosives. 
And inside were men who were defiant also. 

A young officer of the Northumberland Fusiliers paid a 
high tribute to them. "They are wonderful men," he said, 
*'and work their machines until they are bombed to death. 
In the trenches by Fricourt they stayed on when all the 
other men had either been killed or wounded, and would 
neither surrender nor escape. It was the same at Loos, and 
it would not be sporting of us if we did not say so, though 
they have knocked out so many of our best." 

The same opinion in almost the same words was given 
to me to-day by many men whose bodies bore witness to 
these German Maxims, and though their words were a 
tribute to the enemy, they also proved the fine generosity in 
the heart of our own men. 

While the attacks were being made on Montauban and 
Mametz very hard fighting was in progress on the left, or 
western, side of our line from Gommecourt downwards. So 
far I have heard very little of the action at Gommecourt, 
where the German salient was most difficult to assault owing 
to formidable defences. In that direction our progress has 
not been great. 

Farther south at Ovillers and La Boisselle our attacks 
were rather more fortunate, and some ground was gained 
with great loss in life to the enemy, though not without 
many casualties to ourselves. Fortunately, as in all this 
fighting, the proportion of lightly wounded men is wonder- 
fully high. 

The advance upon the ridge of La Boisselle was a splendid 
and memorable thing. The men who took part in it were 
hard, tough fellows who fear neither man nor devil, nor 
engines of war. They went forward cheering, and the 
Tyneside pipers played on their men. The German guns 



4g THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

were flinging Jack Johnsons over, but they did not inflict 
much damage, and the men jeered at them, 

"Silly old five-point-nine crumps!" said a young officer 
to-day who had been among them, "They only made a 
beastly stink and the devil of a noise. It was the machine- 
guns which did all the work," 

The machine-guns were enfilading our men from La Bois- 
selle, and from the high ground above their bullets came 
pattering down in showers, so that when they hit men In the 
shoulder they came out at the wrist. They swept No Man's 
Land like a scythe. 

But our troops passed on steadily with fixed bayonets at 
parade step, not turning their heads when comrades dropped 
to right and left of them. They took the first line of Ger- 
man trenches, which were blown to dust-heaps with the 
bodies of the men who had held them. In the second line 
there were men still living, and still resolute enough to 
defend themselves. They were bombed out of this position, 
and our men went on to the third line still under machine- 
gun fire. 

"It seemed to me," said a Lincolnshire lad, "as if there 
was a machine-gun to every five men." Without exaggera- 
tion there were many of these machines and they were 
served skilfuly and terribly by their gunners. Beyond La 
Boisselle, which was pressed on one side, the fire became 
very intense. High explosives, shrapnel, and trench-mortars 
ploughed up the ground. 

"They threw everything at us except half -croons," said a 
man of the Royal Scots, 

It was the Royal Scots who charged with the bayonet 
into a body of German troops, and the other battalions ad- 
vanced at the double and captured batches of men who had 
no more stomach for the fight. 

Some of the hardest fighting at La Boisselle was done by 
men of Dorset and Manchester with Highland Light Infan- 
try and Borderers. They had an easy time over the front 
line, but when the second was reached had to engage in a 



THE FIRST CHARGE 43 

battle of bombs with a large body of Germans. This re- 
sistance was broken down and when there was a show of 
bayonets the enemy surrendered. They were haggard men, 
who had suffered, like most of our prisoners, from long 
hunger and thirst as our bombardment had cut off their 
supplies and broken the water-pipes. 

Farther north there was a severe struggle for the posses- 
sion of Thiepval, which was once in our hands but is now 
again in the enemy's grip. It is clear from all the evidence 
I can get that our men passed beyond to a further objective 
without staying to clear out the dug-outs where Germans 
were in hiding or to search for all the machine-gun emplace- 
ments. The enemy came out of their hiding-places and 
served their machine-guns upon the British troops who had 
gone forward. 

A sergeant-major of the Manchesters, who took part in 
one of the attacks which followed each other in waves upon 
the Thiepval positions, says that he and his comrades forced 
their way across the front trenches and had to walk over 
the bodies of large numbers of German dead, who had fallen 
in the bombardment. With his regiment he went forward 
into a wood known to the men as "Blighty," and then fell 
wounded. 

Machine-gun bullets and shrapnel were slashing through 
it with a storm of lead, lopping off branches and ricochetting 
from the tree-trunks. The men stood this ordeal superbly, 
and those who were not wounded fought their way through 
towards the village. Some battalions working on the left 
of Thiepval had a very severe ordeal. One of them, 
wounded, told me that they seized the first system of 
trenches in the face of machine-gun fire and captured the 
men who remained alive in the dug-outs. 

They were deep dug-outs, going 30 feet below ground, 
and in some cases, even at that depth, had trap-doors lead- 
ing to still lower chambers, so that our bombardment had 
not touched them. Many of them were elaborately fitted 
and furnished, and were well stocked with wine and beer. 



44 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

A great deal of correspondence was found and sent back to 
our lines in sandbags. 



It was when our men advanced upon the Thiepval woods 
that they had their hardest hours, for the enemy's fire was 
heavy, and they had to pass through an intense barrage. 
Meanwhile big fighting was in progress at Fricourt, and 
some of the North-countrymen had a great ordeal of fire. 
They have done magnificently, and Fricourt is ours. 

Other troops were engaged, for masses of men of many 
British regiments advanced on both sides of the village 
endeavouring to get possession of Shelter Wood, Lozenge 
Wood, and the high ground to the north of the village from 
the position known as the Crucifix. Large numbers of Ger- 
mans were killed and wounded, but the garrison of Fricourt 
maintained a very stout resistance, and until this morning 
our attacks did not succeed in taking this stronghold, al- 
though it was nearly surrounded. 

Heroic acts were done by our men, as I know from the 
comrades who were with them. One boy of eighteen, to 
give only one instance, was so good a captain, although a- 
private soldier, that when the officers of his platoon had 
fallen he rallied the men and led them forward. "Come on, 
my lads," he cried. "We'll get them out!" A pipe-major 
of the Royal Scots led this battalion forward to an old 
Scottish tune, and during the attack stood out alone in No 
Man's Land playing still until he fell wounded. 

Early this morning a very fine flanking attack was made 
on Fricourt by the men who had held on to the ground 
during the night, and Crucifix Trench was taken after the 
explosion of two big mines. The attack then closed in, one 
body of troops working round to the north and another 
fighting their way round the south side in order to get the 
village within a pair of tongs. 

The operation succeeded and the village was taken, but 



THE FIRST CHARGE 45 

fighting still went on to gain possession of the high ridge 
above. A whole company of German soldiers were seen to 
come suddenly across the open with their hands up. Other 
men straggled singly over the shell-beaten ground to sur- 
render to our men. 

But the enemy's guns put up a heavy barrage of shrapnel 
and high explosives when our men tried to advance along 
the ridge, and from the upper end of the Fricourt Wood 
there came the incessant clatter of machine-gun fire. Our 
attack did not falter, and as far as I can learn the position 
to-night is good. 

Here, then, are some scraps of fact about a great battle 
still in progress and covering a wide stretch of ground, in 
which many separate actions are taking place. It is impos- 
sible for an eye-witness to see more than a corner of these 
battlefields, and at this hour for one man to write a clear, 
straight chronicle of so great an adventure. I have been 
travelling to-day about the lines, trying to gather the threads 
together, talking to many of our fighting men, going among 
the wounded and the prisoners, and in the intense and 
immediate interest of this great drama of war which is all 
about me, trying to get at the latest facts of our progress 
from hour to hour. 

But what I have written is only the odds and ends of a 
long heroic story which must be written later with fuller 
knowledge of men and deeds. Only one thing is really very 
clear and shining in all this turmoil of two days of battle — 
it is the unconquerable spirit of our men. 



Ill 

THE FIELD OF HONOUR 



I 

July 3 
As the hours pass we are gaining new ground and extending 
our line slowly but steadily to straighten it out between the 
German strongholds which have been captured by the great 
gallantry of our men after heavy fighting. 

To-day when I went into the heart of these battlefields in 
and around Fricourt, where we have made our most success- 
ful advance, I could see the progress we have made since 
the first day's attacks by the elevation of the shell-fire, which 
traced out the German and British lines. To the right of 
me was Mametz, held by our troops, and our encircling loop 
no longer dipped so steeply southwards as before, but curved 
gradually westwards below the Bois de Mametz until it 
reached Fricourt itself. 

Here we are not only in possession of the village but have 
the wood on the high ground beyond, the Crucifix Trench 
on the edge to the left, and Lozenge Wood still farther to 
the left. Our line then runs to La Boisselle, most of which 
was in our hands early this morning after a fierce bombard- 
ment by our guns, followed by the infantry advance. It 
seemed to me, from my own observation to-day, that the 
German guns are retiring farther back to escape capture 
or direct hits, for many of their shrapnel shells appeared 
to come from an extreme range by high angle fire. All 
this shows that we are pressing the enemy hard, and that 
so far he is unable to bring up supports to secure his defence. 

The scene here was wonderful, and though I have been 

46 



THE FIELD OF HONOUR 47 

in many battlefields since this war began I have never 
watched before such a complete and close picture of war in 
its infernal grandeur. The wood of La Boisselle was to 
my left on the rising slopes, up which there wound a white 
road to that ragged fringe of broken tree-trunks, standing 
like gallows-trees against the sky-line. 

Immediately facing me was Lozenge Wood and the Cruci- 
fix, with two separate trees known as the Poodles, and just 
across the way to my right in the hollow that dips below 
the wood was Fricourt. Montauban, which our troops took 
by assault in the first day's fighting, was marked only by 
one tall chimney, the rest of its ruins being hidden behind a 
crest of ground, but to the right, near enough for me to see 
and count its ruined houses, was Mametz lying in a cup 
below the ridge. 

A great bombardment was raging from both sides, the 
enemy shelling the places we had taken from him, and our 
guns putting a heavy barrage on to his positions. La Bois- 
selle was being shelled by shrapnel with great severity, and 
there was one spot at the northern end of the tree stumps 
where British and German shells seemed to meet and mingle 
their explosions. 

In what was once a village there were dense clouds of 
smoke which rose up in columns and then spread out into 
a thick pall. In the very centre of this place, which looked 
like one of Dante's visions of hell-fire, one of our soldiers 
was signalling with a flaming torch. 

The red flame moved backwards and forwards through 
the wrack of smoke, and was then tossed high, as a new 
burst of shrapnel broke over the place where the signaller 
stood. 

Our batteries were firing single rounds and salvos in the 
direction of Contalmaison from many places behind our 
lines, so that I was in the centre of a circle of guns all con- 
centrating upon the enemy's lines behind Fricourt and 
Mametz Wood and La Boisselle. Shells from our heavies 
came screaming overhead with a high rising note which 



48 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

ends with a sudden roar as the shell bursts, and our field- 
batteries were firing rapidly and continuously so that the 
sharp crack of each shot seemed to rip the air as though 
it were made of calico. 

It was a tornado of shell-fire, and though one's head 
ached at it and each big shell as it travelled over seemed in 
a queer way to take something from one's vitality by its 
rush of air, there was a strange exultation in one's senses 
at the consciousness of this mass of artillery supporting our 
men. Those were our guns. Ours ! 

They had the mastery. They were all registered on the 
enemy. Our guns at last had given us a great chance. The 
infantry had something behind them, and it was not all flesh 
and blood against great engines, as in the early days it used 
to be. 



The enemy was replying chiefly on the ground about La 
Boisselle, so that I hated to think of our men up there, for 
though it was nothing like our bombardment it was heavy 
enough to increase the cost we have had to pay for progress. 
I could see nothing of the rnen in that smoke and flame, but 
I could see men going up towards it, in a quiet, leisurely 
way as though strolling on a summer morning in peaceful 
fields. 

It was curious to watch our soldiers walking about this 
battlefield. They seemed very aimless, in little groups, wan- 
dering about as though picking wild flowers — some of those 
poppies which made great splashes of scarlet up to the 
trenches, or some of the blue cornflowers and purple scabi- 
ous and white stitchwort which weaved the colours of 
France over these poor stricken fields of hers, now hers 
again, and the charlock which ran with a riot of gold in all 
this great luxuriance between the tumbled earthworks where 
dead bodies lay. 

The shells were whining and rending the air above their 



THE FIELD OF HONOUR 49 

heads, but they did not glance upwards or forwards to 
where the shells burst and vomited black smoke. They 
seemed as careless of war as holiday-makers on Hampstead 
Heath. Yet when I went among them I found that each 
man had his special mission, and was part of a general pur- 
pose guided by higher powers. Some of them^ were laying 
new wires for new telephones over ground just captured 
from the enemy. 

Others were runners coming down with messages through 
the barrage higher up the roads. Artillerymen and engi- 
neers were getting on with their job, quietly, without fuss. 

From over the ridge where Crucifix Trench runs from the 
Poodles into Fricourt Wood came a body of men. I could 
see their heads above the trench. Then they seemed to 
rest a while. After that they came into full view below the 
ridge. 

Had they been seen by the German gunners ? Why were 
they running like that down the slope? Some shrapnel- 
clouds came white and curly above the sky-line; others 
fluffed lower, nearer to the men. They were in such a 
bunch that one shell would do great damage there. . . . 

They scattered a little and I saw their figures taking cover 
in the hummocky ridges. It was only later that I heard that 
these men had been fighting heavily down near the two 
trees known as the Poodles, and that they had captured a 
number of German prisoners, who came towards them with 
uphfted hands. The prisoners were being brought down in 
small batches, whom I met on the road. 



Up at La Bolsselle the shelling was still intense, but our 
troops had already surrounded part of the position, and 
after a concentration by our guns advanced and captured it. 
A number of Germans were there in their dug-outs, the 
remnant of a battalion which had suffered frightful things 



50 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

under our gun-fire. Some of the officers, it seems, from 
what the prisoners told me, went away to Bush Tree Copse, 
Contalmaison, saying that they were going to bring up re- 
serves. But they did not come back. 

The other men — about 250 of them — stayed in the dug- 
outs, without food and water, while our shells made a fury 
above them and smashed up the ground. They had a Ger- 
man doctor there, a giant of a man with a great heart, who 
had put his first-aid dressing- station in the second-line trench 
and attended to the wounds of the men until our bombard- 
ment intensified so that no man could live there. 

He took the wounded down to a dug-out — those who had 
not been carried back — and stayed there expecting death. 
But then, as he told me, to-day at about eleven o'clock this 
morning the shells ceased to scream and roar above-ground, 
and after a sudden silence he heard the noise of British 
troops. He went up to the entrance of his dug-out and said 
to some English soldiers who came up with fixed bayonets, 
"My friends, I surrender." Afterwards he helped to 
tend our own wounded, and did very good work for us 
under the fire of his own guns, which had now turned upon 
this position. 

There was another German to-day at La Boisselle, but his 
work was not that of helping wounded men. It was one 
of those machine-gunners who kept up a fire of dropping 
bullets upon our troops when we first made an assault upon 
this position. And to-day he was there still in his emplace- 
ment doing very deadly work, and though he was wounded 
in nine places when we found him he was still working his 
terrible little gun. 

Our men took him prisoner, and, in the English way, bore 
no grudge against him, but sang his praises. Many other 
machine-guns were captured, and round one of them all the 
team was laid out dead by one of our shells. 



THE FIELD OF HONOUR 51 



At about 11.30 in the morning I walked down into Fri- 
court, which was captured yesterday afternoon. It was a* 
strange walk, not pleasant, but full of a terrible interest. 
Fighting was still going on on the high ground above, a 
few hundred yards away, and while I had been watching 
the scene of war from a field near by I had seen heavy 
shells, certainly five-point-nines, falling near the village and 
raising clouds of black and greenish smoke, and they were 
falling into Mametz some distance to the right. 

Fricourt was not an inviting place, but other men had 
been there at a worse time. And the interest of it called 
to one to get into this bit of ruined ground with its broken 
brickwork which for more than a year we have stared at 
across barbed wire and through holes in the ground as an 
evil place beyond our knowledge, as a place from which 
death came to our men from trench-mortars and machine- 
guns, separated from us by lines of trenches full of snipers 
who waited and watched for any of our heads to appear, 
even for a second, above the parapet, and by No Man's 
Land into which some of our brave boys went out at night 
at great peril, hiding in shell-holes, and avoiding the mine- 
fields of the Bois Frangais and other ground honeycombed 
below by German galleries which, night after night — do 
you remember the line in the official communique? — flung 
up the soil and formed another crater and buried some more 
of our men. "There was mining activity near Fricourt." 
Well, there will be no more of it there. 

I went across the fields — Lord God ! that would have 
meant death a week or two ago, before the enemy was busy 
with other things close by — and came down to our old sys- 
tem of trenches. Here were the little wooden bridges across 
which our men made their advance, and litters of sandbags 
no more to be used for the parapets here, and the abandoned 
properties of men who had left these old familiar places — 



52 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the old rat-holes, the bays in the trenches where they stood 
on guard at night, the dug-outs where they had pinned up 
photographs — upon the morning of the great adventure, 
which was yesterday. 

Here was a redoubt from which I had first looked across 
to the Crucifix and the communication-trench up which the 
men used to come at night. Now all abandoned, for the 
men had gone forward. 

The flowers were growing richly in No Man's Land, red 
and yellow and blue, except where the earth was white and 
barren above the mine-fields of the famous Tambour, and 
brown and barren in the Bois Frangais, where never a tree 
now grows. 

We walked across No Man's Land in the full sunlight of 
this July day, and though shells were rushing overhead, 
those from our batteries seemed low enough to cut off the 
heads of the flowers, and mine. They were mostly our 
shells. 

Lightly wounded men, just hit up there beyond the wood, 
walked along unaided, or helped by a comrade. One of 
them, a boy of i8 or so, with blue eyes under his steel 
helmet, stopped me and showed me a bloody bandage round 
his hand, and said with an excited laugh : 

"They got me all right. I was serving my Lewis when 
a bullet caught me smack. Now I'm off. And I've had i8 
months of it." 

He went away grinning at his luck, because the bullet 
might have chosen another place. 

Some German prisoners followed him. Two of them 
were carrying a stretcher on which an English soldier lay 
with his eyes shut. A wounded German behind turned and 
smiled at me — a strong, meaningful smile. He was glad to 
be wounded and out of it. 

Other Germans came down under guard, and little groups 
of English soldiers and Red Cross men. I struck across the 
field again to the old German lines of trenches, and saw the 
full and frightful horror of war. The German trenches 



THE FIELD OF HONOUR 53 

were smashed at some places, by our artillery fire, into 
shapelessness. Green sandbags were flung about, timbers 
from the trench sides had been broken and tossed about like 
match-sticks. 

I stumbled from one shell-crater to another, over bits of 
indescribable things, and the litter of men's tunics and 
pouches and haversacks, and dug-outs. Rifles lay about, 
and the ground was strewn with hand-grenades, and here 
and there was a great unexploded shell which had nosed 
into the soil. There were many German dead lying there 
in Fricourt, and some of our own poor men. The Germans 
were lying thick in one part of the trenches. 

They had been tall, fine men in their life. One of them 
lying with many wounds upon him was quite a giant. An- 
other poor man lay on his back with his face turned up to 
the blue sky and his hands raised up above his body as 
though in prayer. . . . 

But I turned my head away from these sights, as most 
people hide these things from their imagination, too cow- 
ardly to face the reality of war. 

I followed an officer down into a German dug-out until 
he halted half-way down its steps and spoke a word of 
surprise. 

"There's a candle still burning!" 

It gave one an uncanny feeling to see that lighted candle 
in the deep subterranean room, where yesterday German 
officers were living, unless dead before yesterday. 

It could not have been burning all that time. For a mo- 
ment we thought an enemy might still be hiding there, and 
it was not improbable, as two of them had been found in 
Fricourt, only a few hours before. But in all likelihood it 
had been lit by an English soldier after the capture of the 
place. 

The dug-out was littered with German books and papers. 
I picked up one of them, and saw that it was "Advice on 
Sport." Here was sad sport for Germans. There was a 
tragic spirit in that little room, and we went out quickly. I 



64 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

peered into other German dug-outs, and saw how splendidly- 
built they were, so deep and so strongly timbered that not 
even our bombardment had utterly destroyed them. They 
are great workers, these Germans, and wonderful soldiers. 

Everywhere there lay about great numbers of steel hel- 
mets, some of them with vizors, and well designed, so that 
they come down to the nape of the neck and protect all the 
head. Some of our soldiers were bringing them back as 
souvenirs. One man had ten dangling about him, like the 
tin pots on a travelling tinker. 

In the wood beyond the Crucifix our machine-guns were 
firing fiercely, and the noise was like that of a great flame, 
beyond the village. Fricourt itself is just a heap of fright- 
ful ruin, with the remains of houses which the enemy had 
used as machine-gun emplacements. Every yard of it was 
littered with the debris of war's aftermath. Before our 
final attack yesterday many of the German troops filtered 
out in retreat, leaving some of their wounded behind, and 
one poor puppy — a fox terrier — which is now the trophy 
of one of our battalions. 

But a number of men — about 150, I should say — could 
not get away owing to the intensity of our first bombard- 
ment, and when our men stormed the place yesterday after- 
noon they came up out of their dug-outs with their hands 
up for mercy. I saw them all to-day, and spoke with some 
of them. 

They belonged to the 109th, iioth and iiith regiments 
of the 14th Reserve Corps, and were mostly from Baden. 
It would be absurd to talk of these fellows as being under- 
sized or underfed men. They were tall, strong, stout men, 
in the prime of life. Only a few were wounded, and lay 
about in a dazed way. The others answered me cheerfully, 
and expressed their joy at having escaped from our gun- 
fire, which they described as "schrecklich" — terrible. They 
had had no food or drink since yesterday morning until 
their English guards gave it to them. 

I spoke also with a little group of officers. They were 



THE FIELD OF HONOUR 55 

young men of an aristocratic type, and spoke very frankly 
and politely. They, too, acknowledged the new power of 
our artillery and the courage of our men, which was not 
new to them. It was here that I had a talk with the German 
medical ofificer whom I had seen walking down between 
two guards close to Fricourt. After describing his own 
experiences during the bombardment this morning he 
laughed in a sad way. 

"This war!" he said. "We go on killing each other to no 
purpose. Europe is being bled to death, and will be im- 
poverished for long years. It is a war against religion, and 
against civilisation, and I see no end to it. Germany is 
strong and England is strong and France is strong. It is 
impossible for one side to crush the other, so when is the 
end to come?" Because of his services to our own men he 
was given special privileges and an English soldier had 
brought down all his personal belongings. A little apart 
frorn all his fellow officers stood a German lieutenant- 
colonel who was charged with having killed two of our 
officers by bombing them after his surrender. A tall, 
gloomy, truculent man of the worst Prussian type, he stood 
awaiting an inquiry, and I could only hope that he was not 
guilty of such a crime. 

From personal observation I know nothing of what has 
happened elsewhere in the line to-day, but I have heard a 
story of an attack on the Gommecourt salient which shows 
that this action was one of the most tragic and heroic 
things in British history. The enemy had concentrated a 
great mass of guns here in the belief that our main attack 
was to be directed against this part of the front. The 
existence of this belief has been proved by German orders 
which have come into our hands. 

As soon as our men left their trenches after the bombard- 
ment yesterday the enemy barraged our front and support 
trenches with a most infernal fire. Our men advanced 
through this barrage absolutely as though on parade, and 



56 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

in spite of heavy losses made their way over 500 yards of 
No Man's Land to the enemy's front line. 

The German soldiers also behaved with great courage, and 
carried their machine-guns right through our barrage until 
they faced our men in the open and swept them with fire so 
that large numbers fell. 

The attack did not succeed in this part of the line. But 
it drew on the enemy's reserves, and great honour is due to 
the valour of those men of ours, who fought as heroes in 
one of the most glorious acts of self-sacrifice ever made by 
British troops. 



IV 

THE DEATH-SONG OF THE GERMANS 

Morning bright; morning bright — 
Light that leads me to the grave — 

Soon shall dawn with summons brazen 

Call me to my death to hasten — 
I and many a comrade brave. 

"Morgenroth" (Dr. Blackie's translation). 

"Morgenroth !" the haunting death-song of the forlorn hopes of 
the German armies, is the song which was sung so often in the 
Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and is being sung again to-day. 

The words were written by Wilhelm Hauff, a patriotic German 
writer of the first half of the nineteenth century. 



I 

July 4 
No sensational progress has been made by us since I wrote 
my last despatch, yesterday, but our guns are in a good 
position to follow up our advance, and the battle is develop- 
ing, I believe, according to the original plan which antici- 
pated slow and steady fighting from one German position 
to another. That is being done, and another point was 
gained to-day by the capture of Bernafay Wood to the 
north-east of Montauban, from which I have just come 
back after seeing the shelling of this wood, from close range. 
It is behind the lines on the outskirts of the battlefields 
that one sees most of the activity of war, as I saw it to-day 
again when I went up to this captured ground of Montau- 
ban. Up there where fighting was in progress not many 
men were visible. Until the advance, after the work of 
our guns, and the short, sharp rush from open ground under 

57 



58 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the enemy's shrapnel, our men are hidden and the only 
movement to be seen is that of the shells bursting and toss- 
ing up the earth. 

But on the way up, now that the war is no longer station- 
ary, there is a great turmoil of men and mules and guns 
and wagons and again and again to-day I wished that I 
could put on to paper sketches rather than words to describe 
these scenes. For here all along the way were historic 
pictures of the campaign full of life and colour. 

Great camps had been assembled in the dips and hollows 
of the hills with painted tents between the lines and great 
masses of horses and wagons and gun-limbers crowded to- 
gether, with thousands of men busy as ants. Transport 
columns came down or went up the hilly roads driven by 
tired men who drooped in their seats or saddles after three 
days of battle, in which they have had but little sleep. One 
of them was asleep to-day. He had fallen backwards in his 
wagon still holding the reins, and while he slept his horses 
jogged on steadily following the leaders of the column. 
On the roadside and among the wild flowers of uncultivated 
fields batches of infantry, who had been marching all night, 
had flung themselves down and slept also while they had a 
half-hour's chance, with their arms outstretched, with their 
rifles and packs for their pillows. 

Other men were moving up towards the fighting lines, 
marching with a steady tramp along the chalky roads, which 
plastered them with white dust from steel helmet down- 
wards, and put a white mask upon their faces, except where 
the sweat came down in gullies. Artillerymen were leading 
up reserve horses, who put their ears back for a moment, 
as though to switch off flies when heavy guns blared forth 
close to them and shells of at least Sin. calibre went howling 
overhead to the enemy's lines. 

At wayside corners were field dressing stations flying the 
Red Cross flag, and surrounded by little parks of ambu- 
lances, where stretcher men were busy. And every now 
and then, at a cross-road or a by-path, a wooden notice- 



THE DEATH-SONG OF THE GERMANS 59 

board directed the way in red letters and the words "Walk- 
ing wounded." 

This was the Via Dolorosa of men who could hobble 
away from the battlefield up there and get back on their legs 
to save transport more badly needed by stricken comrades. 

Closer to the lines there was a scene which would make 
one weep if one had the weakness of tears after two years 
of war. Our dead were being buried in a newly-made ceme- 
tery, and some of their comrades were standing by the open 
graves and sorting out the crosses — the little wooden crosses 
which grow in such a harvest across these fields of France. 

They were white above the brown earth, and put into 
neat rows, and labelled with strips of tin bearing the names 
of those who now have peace. 

French troops were mingled among our own men. A 
working party of them came along shouldering picks and 
shovels. They were Territorials, past the fighting age, but 
tall, sturdy, hardened m^en, with a likeness to their young 
sons who, with less weight, but with the same hard bronzed 
look, are fighting the new battles of the war. 

It was the sound of French guns away to the south which 
was making most commotion in the air to-day. Big fighting 
was going on there, as though the French were making a 
further advance, and the rafale of their field guns was 
incessant, and like the roll of many drums. 



As I went over the battlefield of Montauban the enemy's 
shells and our own were falling over Bernafay Wood, where 
each side held part of the ground. A little to my left 
Mametz was being pounded heavily by the German gun- 
ners, and they were flinging shrapnel and "crumps" into the 
ragged fringe of trees, just in front of me, which marks the 
place where the village of Montauban once stood. They 
were also barraging a line of trench just below the trees, 



60 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

and keeping a steady flow of five-polnt-nines into one end 
of the wood to the right of Montauban, for which our men 
are now fighting. 

Other shells came with an irregular choice of place over 
the battlefield, and there were moments when those clouds 
of black shrapnel overhead suggested an immediate dive 
into the nearest dug-out. 

I passed across our old line of trenches from which on 
Saturday morning our men went out cheering to that great 
attack which carried them to the furthest point gained that 
day, in spite of heavy losses. The trenches now were filled 
with litter collected from the battlefield — stacks of rifles and 
kit, piles of hand-grenades, no longer needed by those who 
owned them. 

This old system of trenches, in which French troops lived 
for many months of war before they handed them over to 
our men, was like a ruined and deserted town left hurriedly 
because of plague, and in great disorder. . Letters were 
lying about, and bully beef tins, and cartridge clips. Our 
men had gone forward and these old trenches are aban- 
doned. 

It is beyond the power of words to give a picture of the 
German trenches over this battlefield of Montauban, where 
we now hold the line through the wood beyond. Before 
Saturday last it was a wide and far-reaching network of 
trenches, with many communication ways and strong 
traverses, and redoubts — so that one would shiver at their 
strength to see them marked on a map. No mass of in- 
fantry, however great, would have dared to assault such a 
position with bombs and rifles. 

It was a great underground fortress, which any body of 
men could have held against any others for all time apart 
from the destructive power of heavy artillery. But now! 
. . . Why now it was the most frightful convulsion of earth 
that the eyes of man could see. 

The bombardment by our guns had tossed all these earth- 
works into vast rubbish-heaps. We had made this ground 



THE DEATH-SONG OF THE GERMANS 61 

one vast series of shell craters, so deep and so broad that it 
was like a field of extinct volcanoes. 

The ground rose and fell in enormous waves of brown 
earth, so that standing above one crater I saw before me 
these solid billows with 30 feet slopes stretching away like a 
sea frozen after a great storm. We had hurled thousands 
of shells from our heaviest howitzers and long-range guns 
into this stretch of field. 



I saw here and touched here the awful result of that 
great gunfire which I had watched from the centre of our 
batteries on the morning of July i. That bombardment had 
annihilated the German position. Even many of the dug- 
outs, going 30 feet deep below the earth and strongly tim- 
bered and cemented, had been choked with masses of earth 
so that many dead bodies lay buried there. But some had 
been left in spite of the upheaval of earth around them, and 
into some of these I crept down, impelled by the strong 
grim spell of those little dark rooms below where German 
soldiers lived only a few days ago. 

They seemed haunted by the spirits of the men who had 
made their homes here and had carried into these holes the 
pride of their souls, and any poetry they had in their hearts, 
and their hopes and terrors, and memories of love and life 
in the good world of peace. I could not resist going down 
to such places, though to do so gave me gooseflesh. 

I had to go warily, for on the stairways were unexploded 
bombs of the "hair-brush" style. A stumble or a kick might 
send one to eternity by high explosive force, and it was dif- 
ficult not to stumble, for the steps were broken or falling 
into a landslide. 

Down inside the little square rooms were filled with the 
relics of German officers and men. The deal tables were 
strewn with papers, on the wooden bedsteads lay blue-grey 
overcoats. Wine bottles, photograph albums, furry haver- 



62 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

sacks, boots, belts, kit of every kind had all been tumbled 
together by British soldiers who had come here after the 
first rush to the enemy's trenches and searched for men in 
hiding. 

There were men in hiding now, though harmless. In one 
of the dug-outs where I groped my way down it was pitch 
dark. I stumbled against something, and fumbled for my 
matches. When I struck a Hght I saw in a corner of the 
room a German. 

He lay curled up, with his head on his arm, as though 
asleep. I did not stay to look at his face, but went up 
quickly. And yet I went down others and lingered in one 
where no corpse lay because of the tragic spirit that dwelt 
there and put its spell on me. I picked up some letters. 

They were all written to "dear brother Wilhelm," from 
sisters and brothers, sending him their loving greetings, 
praying that his health was good, promising to send him 
gifts of food, and yearning for his homecoming. "Since 
your last letter and card," said one of them, "we have heard 
nothing more from you. 

"Every time the postman comes we hope for a little note 
from you. . , . Dear Wilhelm, in order to be patient with 
your fate you must thank God because you have found 
fortune in misfortune." 

Poor, pitiful letters! I was ashamed to read them be- 
cause it seemed like prying into another man's secrets, 
though he was dead. 

There was a little book I picked up. It is a book of sol- 
diers' songs, full of old German sentiment, about "the little 
mother" and the old house at home and the pretty girl who 
kissed her soldier boy before he went off to the war. And 
here is the sad old "Morgenlied," which has been sung along 
many roads of France. 

"Red morning sun! Red morning sun! Do you light 
me to an early death? Soon will the trumpets sound, and 
I must leave this life, and many a comrade with me. 

"I scarcely thought my joy would end like this. Yester- 



THE DEATH-SONG OF THE GERMANS 63 

day I rode a proud steed; to-day I am shot through the 
chest ; to-morrow I shall be in the cold grave, O red morning 
sun!" 

On the front page of this book, which I found to-day at 
Montauban, there is an Army Order from Prince von Rup- 
precht of Bavaria to the soldiers of the Sixth Army. 

"We have the fortune," it says, "to have the English on 
our front, the troops of those people whose envy for years 
has made them work to surround us with a ring of enemies 
in order to crush us. It is to them that we owe this bloody 
and most horrible war. . . . Here is the antagonist who 
stands most in the way of the restoration of peace. For- 
wards !" 

It seemed to me that the preface by Prince Rupprecht of 
Bavaria spoilt the sentiment in the German folksongs, which 
were full of love rather than of hate. 



I stood again above ground, in the shell craters. Other 
shells were coming over my head with their indescribable 
whooping, and the black shrapnel was still bursting about 
the fields, and the Germans were dropping five-point-nines 
along a line a hundred yards away. 

"Be careful about those dug-outs," said an officer, "Some 
of them have charged mines inside, and there may be Ger- 
mans still hiding in them." 

Two Germans were found hiding there to-day. Some of 
our men found themselves being sniped, and after a search 
found that the shots were coming from a certain section 
of trench in which there were communicating dug-outs. 

After cunning trappers' work they isolated one dug-out in 
which the snipers were concealed. 

"Come out of that," shouted our men. "Surrender like 
good boys." 

But the only answer they had was a shot. 



64 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

The dug-out was bombed, but the men went through an 
underground passage into another one. Then a charge of 
ammonal was put down and the dug-out blown to bits. 



This afternoon, while I was still on the battlefield of 
Montauban, a great thunderstorm broke. It was sudden 
and violent, and rain fell in sheets. The sky became black 
with a greenish streak in it when the lightning forked over 
the high wooded ridges towards La Boiselle and above 
Fricourt Wood. 

"Heaven's artillery !" said an officer, and his words were 
not flippant. There was something awe-inspiring in the 
darkness that closed in upon these battlefields and the great 
rolls of thunder that mingled with the noise of the guns. 
Artillery observation was impossible, but the guns still fired, 
and their flashes were as vivid as the lightning, revealing 
through the murk the dark figures of marching men, and 
the black woods slashed with shell-fire just above Montau- 
ban. In a little while the low-lying ground was flooded, so 
that the guns in the valleys were in water, and the horse 
transport splashed through ponds, scattering fountains 
above their axles, and rivers ran down the broken trenches 
of the old German line. 

I stood in the storm watching this scene of war, and the 
gloom and terror of it closed about me. 



V 

THE ATTACK ON THE LEFT 



I 

July 5 
Last night and this morning the enemy made attempts to 
drive our men out of their positions at Thiepval, but were 
repulsed with heavy losses. Their bombers advanced in 
strong numbers upon the Leipzig trench, south of the village 
of Thiepval, and at the same time north of the cemetery to 
St. Pierre Divion, but in neither case did they have any 
success. 

At other parts of the line, between La Boiselle and 
Montauban, there were bombardments by the enemy's bat- 
teries and by our own; and by hard fighting we have cap- 
tured Peak trench and the important system of trenches 
known as the Quadrangle, north-east of La Boiselle and 
on the way to Contalmaison. 

Standing to-day on the battlefield north of Ovillers-la- 
Boiselle, I was able to look over a wide area of the zone of 
fire, and to see our new positions. Straight in front of me 
was Thiepval Wood, marked by a ragged fringe of broken 
trees, through which appeared the ruins of the village. 

Heavy shells were falling there and our shrapnel was 
bursting thickly upon the high ground held by the enemy. 
To the left of me was Beaumont-Hamel, opposite Auchon- 
villers, and the village of Authuille. 

It is historic ground. A hundred years hence men of 
our blood will come here with reverence as to sacred soil. 
For over this stretch of country, a few miles wide, has been 
fought one of the great battles of history, and here many 

65 



66 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

thousands of our men advanced upon the enemy with a 
spirit of marvellous self-sacrifice, beyond the ordinary 
courage of men. 

They faced hellish fires, but without faltering. There was 
not one man who turned and fled at a time when the bravest 
of them might have quailed. They were all heroes worthy 
of the highest honour which may be given for valour in the 
field. Something supernatural seemed to animate these bat- 
talions of English boys and these battalions of Irish and 
Scots, so that they went forward into furnace fires at 
Beaumont Hamel and Gommecourt as though to fair fields, 
and when many of them stood in the very presence of death 
it was to the cry of "No surrender!" Then they went 
forward again to meet their fate. 



Their losses were heavy. It is tragic as well as wonder- 
ful, this story of our advance upon the German lines, when 
we captured their trenches by an assault that could not be 
resisted at first even by overwhelming gunfire. I have 
spoken to Brigadiers who mourn many of their dear men. 
The agony in their eyes made it difficult to face them. The 
number of casualties was high, throughout the whole length 
of front on the left of our attack, and inevitable because the 
valour of the men counted no cost in their assault against 
positions terribly strong, as they knew, but not stronger 
than their resolve to carry them. 

The enemy's losses were frightful, too, and his courage 
great. It was because very brave men were on both sides 
that the battlefield in this region was strewn with stricken 
men. 

They were men of the North Country who were on the 
left of our attack between Ovillers-La Boiselle and a point 
south of Hebuterne. As soon as our bombardment lifted 
at 7.30 on the morning of July i the brigade left its trenches 



THE ATTACK ON THE LEFT 67 

and advanced line by line in perfect order as though on 
parade. 

The ground in front of them was wrecked by our shell- 
fire. Several times during the bombardment the trenches 
had heaved and changed their form, so that all the con- 
tours of the earth were altered. But there were many men 
still left alive below ground in the German dug-outs, those 
deep dug-outs of theirs that go below the reach of even the 
heaviest shells, and with them were many machine-guns and 
deadly weapons. 

Behind them also was a great concentration of artillery, 
for it is evident that the enemy had expected attack here, 
perhaps our main attack, and had massed his heaviest guns 
at this point. His barrage was immense in its effect of fire 
upon our trenches and the ground between ours and his. 
To reach his line our men had to pass through a wall of 
bursting shells. Our own barrage continued intensely, but 
at the moment of the infantry attack the German soldiers 
stood up on their parapets in the very face of this bombard- 
ment and fired upon our advancing men with automatic 
rifles. 

Their machine-gunners also showed an extreme courage, 
and with amazing audacity forced their way over the broken 
parapets into No Man's Land and swept our ranks with a 
scythe of bullets. Numbers of our men dropped, but others 
went on, charging the machine-guns with fixed bayonets, 
hurling bombs at the men on the parapets, and forcing their 
way into and across the German trenches. Wave after 
wave followed, and those who did not fall went on, into 
the enemy's first line, into the enemy's second line, then on 
again to his third line, and by a kind of miracle even to 
his fourth line. There were men who went as far as Serre. 
They never came back. 

The enemy's guns kept up a continuous bombardment 
from 7.30 till mid-day, like an incessant roll of drums, and 
the ground over which our men continued to advance was 
cratered like a system of trous-de-loups. An orderly who 



68 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

tried to come back with a message from the men in front 
was buried three times on his way, but struggled out and 
dehvered his report. Human courage could not reach 
greater heights than these men showed. 



On the right of these North Countrymen were other bod- 
ies of troops from the West of England, the Midlands, and 
Eastern Counties, with battalions of Irish and Scottish 
troops. They, too, had to face a great ordeal. When 
they went towards the German trenches, not at a rush, but 
at parade step, under a storm of shells, the enemy came up 
out of their dug-outs, and with machine-guns and rifles, and 
fought very stubbornly, even when the Midland men and 
other English troops reached them with bombs and bayo- 
nets. There was a fierce corps-a-corps in the first-line trench 
until most of the enemy were killed. 

Then our men went on to the second German line under 
still fiercer fire. By this time they were in an inferno of 
shell fire and smoke as nothing was seen of them by ar- 
tillery observers until at 8.45 some rockets went up very far 
into the German lines showing that some of the Territorials 
had got as far as their last objective. Some of the infantry 
(they were two of the Essex Regiments and the King's Own 
of the 4th Division) went as far as Pendant Copse south- 
east of Serre. Messages came through from them. Urgent 
messages calling for help. "For God's sake send us bombs." 

But the enemy's gun-fire was so violent and so deep in its 
barrage that nothing could pass through it, and it was im- 
possible to send up relief to men who had gone too far in 
their keen desire to break the German lines. 

A little further south were some Irish, Welsh, and Scot- 
tish troops. When they left their trenches our bombard- 
ment was still at its full weight, but suddenly the noise of it 



THE ATTACK ON THE LEFT 69 

was obliterated entirely, so that not a gun was heard, by 
a new and more terrible sound. 

It was the sound as though great furnace fires were weep- 
ing flames across No Man's Land with a steady blast, and 
it came from German machine-guns in the stronghold of 
Beaumont Hamel and from more German machine-guns in 
concrete emplacements which had escaped our gunfire upon 
the enemy's trenches. 

Many of our men fell. Some of the Irish troops (the 
Ulster men) lost severely. But other ranks marched on, not 
quickly, but at a quiet leisurely pace, never faltering as gaps 
were made in their ranks. 

Some of them did not even trouble to wear their steel 
casques, but carried them, as though for future use if need 
be. And they went across the German trenches and right 
ahead into the very heart of a storm of fire, too quickly, in 
spite of their calm way of going, because they did not clear 
the German dug-outs as they passed, and men came out and 
bombed them from the rear. South of Beaumont Hamel 
were some other battalions, whose advance was upon Thiep- 
val Wood, and they fought with extraordinary resolution 
and hardihood. 

It was they who shouted "No surrender !" as their battle- 
cry, and these tough, hard gallant men forced their way 
forward over ground raked by every kind of shot and shell. 
The enemy's trenches could not resist their attack, and they 
stormed their way through, killing many of the enemy who 
resisted them. In Thiepval Wood, where the trees were 
slashed by shrapnel, they collected their strength, formed 
into line, and stood the shock of several German counter- 
attacks. Then they charged and flung down the enemy's 
ranks, taking more than 200 prisoners. 

Another counter-attack was made upon the soldiers who 
had forced their way to the outskirts of Thiepval village, 
from which there came an incessant chatter of machine-gun 
fire. Some of them were cut off from all support, but they 



70 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

fought forward, and the shout of "No surrender!" came 
from them again, though they were sure of death. 

This attack by our troops on the left of the theatre of 
attack is one of the greatest revelations of human courage 
ever seen in history. The tragedy of it — for the loss of 
many brave men makes it tragic — is brightened by the shin- 
ing valour of all these splendid soldiers, to whom death, in 
those great hours, had no kind of terror. 

The lightly wounded men who came back, and there were 
large numbers of lightly wounded men, were proud of their 
adventure and hopeful of victory. They had no panic in 
their eyes or hearts. It was a weary walk for many of 
them down to the Red House, where their wounds were 
staunched. They had two miles to go, and it was a long 
two miles to men weak from the loss of blood, dizzy, tired 
to the point of death. Some of them staggered and fell 
at the very gate of the dressing station, but even then they 
spoke brave words and said, "We've got 'em on the run !" 

The enemy behaved well, I am told, to our wounded men 
at some parts of the line, and helped them over the para- 
pets. This makes us loth to tell other stories, not so good. 
Let us not think, just now, of the ugliness of battle, but 
rather of the beauty of these men of ours, who were forget- 
ful of self and faced the cruellest fire with a high and noble 
courage. 



VI 

THE LONDON MEN AT GOMMECOURT 



I 

July 19 
As long ago as Loos, which seems an enormous time ago, 
it was proved that London produces men of great fighting 
quahties, not weakened by City Hfe, and, in spite of more 
sensitive nerves than country-bred men, able to stand the 
strain of battle just as well, with a quick intelligence in a 
tight corner, and with pride and imagination that do not 
let them surrender self-respect. 

"London men fight on their nerves," said one of our 
Generals the other day, "but they make great soldiers. More 
stolid men often give way to shell shock and strain more 
easily than the Londoner, with all his sensibility." 

In our great attack of July i some of the London bat- 
talions again showed a very fine courage and a most self- 
sacrificing devotion to duty in hours of supreme ordeal. 

They broke the German line at Gommecourt and when 
ill-luck beset them on either side, so that they found them- 
selves in utterly untenable positions, with heavy losses, they 
held on stubbornly against the enemy's counter-attacks, and 
suffered all that war can make men suffer — there is hardly 
a limit to that, God knows — with Stoic endurance. 

These men belonged to old Volunteer regiments, famous 
in times of peace, when once a year young City clerks and 
professional men took a fortnight's leave at Easter for 
manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, and came back rather stiff 
and rather bronzed, with stories of sham fights and jolly 
bivouacs at night, and smoking concerts with good fellows 

71 



7S THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

who lead a chorus. It was a great adventure — in times of 
peace ! 

But even when the Volunteers changed their form into 
the Territorials and war tightened up in discipline, and at- 
tended more drills and had a harder time in camp, no man 
guessed that before a year or two had passed the Queen's 
Westminsters would be fighting through hell-fire in France, 
or that "the old Vies" — the Queen Victoria Rifles — would 
be smashing through German barbed wire under machine- 
gun fire, or that the Rangers and the London Rifle Brigade 
and the London Scottish would be crossing ground, strewn 
with dead and wounded, in a storm of high explosives. 

"Punch" made funny pictures about this amateur soldier- 
ing. The "Terriers" were not thought to count for much by 
military critics who had seen service in South Africa. . . . 

Well, in this war the Territorial infantry and the Terri- 
torial gunners have counted for a great deal, and during 
these last few days they have proved themselves, once again, 
great soldiers — great in attack and great in resistance. 



When the four leading battalions left their trenches near 
Gommecourt at 7.30 after the great bombardment of the 
German position they had a long way to go before they 
reached the enemy's front lines. 

No Man's Land was a broad stretch of ground, 400 
yards across in some parts, and not less than 200 yards at 
the narrowest point. 

It was a long, long journey in the open, for 50 yards, or 
20, are long enough to become a great graveyard if the en- 
emy's machine-guns get to work. 

But they advanced behind dense smoke-clouds, which 
rolled steadily towards the German trenches and kept down 
the machine-gunners in their dug-outs. Unlike the experi- 
ence of most of our men in other parts of the line, they 



THE LONDON MEN AT GOMMECOURT 73 

escaped lightly from machine-gun fire, and their chief risk 
was from the barrage of shell-fire which the enemy flung 
across No Man's Land with some intensity. 

But the Londoners started forward to this line of high 
explosives and went on and through at a quick pace, in open 
order. On the left was the London Rifle Brigade, in the 
centre came the Rangers and "Vies.," on the right the Lon- 
don Scottish, and, behind, the Queen's Westminsters and 
Kensingtons, who were to advance through the others. 

Men fell across the open ground, caught by flying bits of 
shell or buried by the great bursts of high explosives which 
opened up the earth. But the others did not look back, 
afraid to weaken themselves by the sight of their stricken 
comrades, and at a great pace, half walking and half run- 
ning, reached the German line. It was no longer a system 
of trenches. 

It was a sea of earth with solid waves. Our heavy guns 
had annihilated parapet and parados, smashed the timbers 
into matchwood, strewn sandbags into rubbish heaps, and 
made a great wreckage. But German industry below ground 
was proof against all this shell-fire, and many of the dug- 
outs still stood. 

They were full of Germans, for the line was strongly 
held, and many of these men came up with their machine- 
guns and bombs to resist the attack. But the Londoners 
sprang upon them, swept over them, and captured the front 
network of trenches with amazing speed. 

It was not a steady-going business, slow and deliberate. 
The quick mind of the London man spurred him to quick 
action. 

He did not linger to collect souvenirs, or to chat with 
English-speaking Germans. "London leads !" was the shout 
of Victorias and Westminsters. 

The London Scottish were racing forward on the right 
with their brown kilts swinging across the broken ground. 
But the officers kept their heads and as much order as pos- 
sible at such a time. 



74 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

They held back enough men to clear the dug-outs and 
collect prisoners — the best kind of souvenirs. 

Two hundred of them were captured in the dugouts and 
brought up and sent back over the place that had been No 
Man's Land and now, for a time, was ours. 

At least 200 came back, but there were many more who 
never got back, though they started on the journey under 
armed guard. 



The enemy's artillery was increasing the density of the 
barrage upon our old front-line trenches and the ground in 
front of it. 

He made a wall of high explosives through which no 
living thing could pass. The escorts and their prisoners 
tried to pass — and failed. 

At the time the London men fighting forward did not 
think of that barrage behind them. They were eager to get 
on, to be quick over the first part of their business before 
taking breath for the next. 

And they got on with astounding speed. In less than 
the time it has taken me to write this narrative No Man's 
Land had been crossed, the trenches had been taken, the 
prisoners collected and sent back on their way, and Ger- 
man strongholds and redoubts behind the first system of 
trench work had been seized by London regiments. 

It would have taken them longer to walk from Charing- 
cross to St. Paul's-churchyard with no Germans in the way. 
It was the quickest bit of work that has been done by any 
freemen of the city. 

The Riflemen had swarmed into a strong point on the left, 
knocking out the machine-guns, and on the right the Lon- 
don Scots were holding a strong redoubt in a very ugly cor- 
ner of ground. Everything had been won that London had 
been asked to win. 

Before some hours had passed these London soldiers 



THE LONDON MEN AT GOMMECOURT 75 

knew that they were in a death-trap and cut off from es- 
cape. 

Owing to the great strength of the enemy to the right and 
left of the position where they had concentrated masses of 
guns, and where the ground was more difficult to carry, the 
troops on either side of the Londoners, in spite of heroic 
courage and complete self-sacrifice, had advanced so far. 

The London men had therefore thrust forward a salient 
into the German lines, and were enclosed by the enemy. 

Behind them, on the way to their own lines, the enemy's 
barrage was steadily becoming more violent. Having 
stopped the other attacks to the north and south, he was 
now able to concentrate the fire of his guns upon the 
ground in the London area, and by the early afternoon he 
had smashed our trenches and communication trenches, 
while still flinging out a line of high explosives to prevent 
supports coming up to the men who were in the captured 
salient. 

They were cut off, and had no other means of rescue but 
their own courage. 

Desperate efforts were made by their comrades behind to 
send up supplies of ammunition and other means of defence. 
The carrying parties attempted again and again to cross 
No Man's Land, but suffered heavy casualties. 

One party of 60 men, with supplies of hand grenades, 
set out on this journey, but only three came back. Single 
men went on with a few grenades, determined to carry some 
kind of support to the men in front, but fell dead or 
wounded before they reached their goal. 

On the right the London Scottish were holding on to 
their redoubt, building barricades and beating off the Ger- 
man bombers. But as the hours passed ammunition became 
scarce. Our supplies of bombs were almost exhausted, here 
and there quite exhausted. The London men went about 
collecting German bombs, and for some time these served, 
but not enough could be found to maintain effective fire. 
The position became more ugly. 



76 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

But the men did not lose heart. In those bad hours there 
were many men who showed great quahties of courage, and 
were great captains whatever their rank. One officer — to 
mention only one — was splendid when things were worst. 

He had taken command of a company when his senior 
ofiEicer was killed in the first assault, and kept his men in 
good heart so that they could organise a defence against the 
enemy's counter-attacks. 

They were surrounded by German grenadiers and suf- 
fered heavily from artillery, machine-gun and sniping fire. 
The number of the wounded increased steadily. The bomb- 
ing party keeping the enemy back flung all their bombs, and 
then had empty hands and were helpless. Not many rounds 
of ammunition were left for the riflemen. After that there 
would be no defence. But the officer would not give way to 
hopelessness. He rallied six or seven good men about him, 
and ordered the others to retreat with the wounded and take 
their chance across No Man's Land while he put up a last 
fight. 

With his small band he held the barricade until the others 
had gone away, and held on still until all but two of his 
men were killed. 

He was the last to leave, and by a miracle of luck came 
back to his own lines unwounded, except for a few scars and 
scratches. The courage of the man and his fine spirit saved 
the situation at the most critical time, and saved also many 
good lives. 

There were many men of fine valour there. Men of 
London, not bred for war, and liking life as one sees it when 
there are pretty faces in Kensington Gardens, and when 
there's sunlight on the windows in the Strand, and when 
the dome of St. Paul's rises like a white cloud above the 
busses in Ludgate-hill. 



THE LONDON MEN AT GOMMECOURT 77 



One of them was a lance-corporal who was wounded in 
two places, so badly that his right arm hung useless by his 
side. But he would not give in. 

"If I can't use a weapon," he said, "I can give a lead to 
my chums." And he gave them a lead, taking charge of a 
group of men holding the left flank of a position, organising 
them into bombing parties, and directing them to build bar- 
ricades. He held on to his post until the German attack 
became too strong and was the last to leave. 

A boy in the London Scottish — I played at ball with him 
once in an old garden when there was laughter in the world 
— escaped death by a kind of miracle. 

The trench he was in, with forty men, was being shelled 
to bits, and rather than fall into the hands of the Germans 
he decided to attempt escape. With one of his sergeants he 
made his way towards our lines, but had only gone a short 
distance when the sergeant was shot dead. 

A bullet came a moment later and struck my friend. It 
was deflected from his brandy flask and went through his 
thigh, knocking him head over heels into a shell-hole. Here 
he lay for some hours until it was dark, when he succeeded 
in crawling back to his lines. 

He was the only one saved of his forty comrades. 

Gradually the men withdrew, straggling back across No 
Man's Land, which was still under great shell-fire, so that 
the way of escape was full of peril. 

It was the turn of the stretcher-bearers, and they worked 
with great courage. And here one must pay a tribute to 
the enemy. 

"We had white men against us," said one of the officers, 
"and they let us get in our wounded without hindrance as 
soon as the fight was over." 

It is only fair to say that they acted with humanity, and 
one wishes to God that they would not use such foul means 



78 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

of destruction as those newly invented by chemists with 
devilish cruelty. 

The soldiers are better than their scientists, and in this 
case at least they remembered the spirit of chivalry which 
they have not often remembered in all the foulness of this 
war. 

It was difficult enough to get in the wounded. Many of 
them could not be found or brought back and stayed on the 
field of battle suffering great anguish for days and nights. 
One man who was wounded early in the battle of July i 
crawled over to three other wounded men and stayed with 
them until the night of July 6. 

During that time he tended his comrades, who were 
worse than he was, and went about among dead men gath- 
ering food and water from their haversacks and bottles. 

But for him his friends would have died. On the night 
of the 6th he succeeded in getting back to our lines across 
that awful stretch of No Man's Land, and then insisted upon 
going back as the guide of the stretcher-bearers who brought 
in the others. 



VII 

THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT FRICOURT 



I 

July 6 
There is something strangely inhuman in the aspect of a 
battle watched from the edge of its furnace fires, or even 
as I stood watching it within the crescent of our guns. Bat- 
talions move forward like ants across the field, and one can- 
not see the light in men's eyes nor distinguish between one 
man and another. 

In this war and in this latest battle I have seen the quality 
of manhood uplifted to wonderful heights of courage be- 
yond the range of normal laws ; and these soldiers of ours, 
these fine and simple men go forward to the highest terrors 
with such singing hearts that one can hardly keep a little 
moisture from one's eyes when they go passing on the 
roads. 

They picked wild flowers and put them in their belts and 
caps — red poppies and blue cornflowers — and when the 
word came to march again they went forward towards 
the front with a fine swinging pace and smiling faces under 
the sweat and dust. Yet they know what battle means. 

I went to-day again among the men who fought at Fri- 
court. Some of them had come back behind the lines, and 
outside their billets the divisional band was playing, but not 
to much of an audience, for of those who fought at Fricourt 
in the first assault there are not large numbers left. The of- 
ficers who came round the village with me had a lonely look. 
After battle, such a battle as this, it is difficult to keep the 
sadness out of one's eyes. So many good fellows have gone. 

79 



80 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

. . . But they were proud of their men. They found a joy 
in that. The men had done gloriously. They had won their 
ground and held it, through frightful fire. "The men were 
topping." 

There were a lot of Yorkshire men among them who 
fought at Fricourt and it was those I saw to-day. They 
were the heroes, with other North Country lads, of one of 
the most splendid achievements of British arms ever written 
down in history. 

Some of them were still shaken. When they spoke to me 
their words faltered now and then, and a queer look came 
into their eyes. But, on the whole, they were astoundingly 
calm, and had not lost their sense of humour. Of the first 
advance over No Man's Land, which was 150 yards across 
to the enemy's front line trench, some of these men could 
remember nothing. It was just a dreadful blank. 

'T was just mad at the time," said one of them. 'The 
first thing I know is that I found myself scrambling over 
the German parapets with a bomb in my hand. The dead 
were lying all round me." 

But a sergeant there remembered all. He kept his wits 
about him, strangely clear at such a time. He saw that his 
men were being swept with machine-gun fire, so that they all 
lay down to escape its deadly sc3rthe. But he saw also that 
the bullets were just washing the ground so that the pros- 
trate men were being struck in great numbers. 

He stood up straight and called upon the others to stand, 
thinking it would be better to be hit in the feet than in the 
head. Then he walked on and came without a scratch to 
the German front line. 



Here and in the lines behind there was a wreckage of 
earth from our bombardment, but several of the dug-outs 
had been untouched and in them during our gunfire men 
were sitting 30 feet down, with machine-guns ready, and 



THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT FRICOURT 81 

long periscopes, through which they could see our lines and 
the first wave of advancing men. Before the word reached 
them, those German machine gunners had rushed upstairs 
and behind the cover of their wrecked trenches fired bursts 
of bullets at our men. 

Each gun team had with them a rifleman who was a crack 
shot, and who obeyed his army orders to pick off English 
ofiicers. So they sniped our young lieutenants with cool 
and cruel deliberation. Two of them who were dressed as 
privates escaped for this reason. Many of the others fell. 

"With so many officers gone," said one of the Yorkshire 
lads, "it was every man for himself, and we carried on as 
best we could." 

They carried on as far as the second and third lines, in 
a desperate fight with German soldiers who appeared out 
of the tumbled earth and flung bombs with a grim refusal 
of surrender. 

"Well, if you're asking for it," said one of our men — and 
he hurled himself upon a great German and ran his bayonet 
through the man's body. 

It was bloody work for boys who are not butchers by 
instinct. Passion caught hold of them and they saw red. 

"I don't know how it was," said one of them with a 
queer thoughtfulness in his eyes as he groped back to this 
moment of fierce excitement. "Before I went over I had 
no rage in me. I didn't want this hand-to-hand business. 
But suddenly I found myself fighting like a demon. It was 
my life or theirs, and I was out to kill first." 

There was not much killing at that spot. When most 
of our men were within ten yards many of the Germans who 
had been flinging bombs lifted up their hands and cried 
"Mercy !" to those whom they had tried to blow to bits. 

It was rather late to ask for mercy, but it was given to 
them. There was a search into the dug-outs — do you under- 
stand that all this was under great shell fire? — and many 
Germans were found in hiding there. 

"I surrender," said a German officer, putting his head 



82 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

out of a hole in the earth, "and I have a wounded man with 
me." "All right," said a Yorkshire sergeant; "fetch him 
up, and no monkey tricks." 

But out of the hole came not one man, but forty, in a 
long file that seemed never to end, all of whom said "Kame- 
rad !" to the sergeant, who answered, "Good day to you ! — 
and how many more?" 

They were a nuisance to him then. He wanted to get on 
and this was waste of time. But he sent back 42 prisoners 
with three lightly wounded fellows of his company — he 
could not spare more — and then advanced with his men be- 
yond the German third line. 

Bunches of men were straggling forward over the shell- 
broken ground towards the German line at Crucifix Trench, 
to the left of Fricourt. 

They knew that this trench was important, that their 
lives were well given if they could capture it. And these 
Yorkshire boys from the hills and dales thought nothing of 
their lives so that they could take it. 



They unslung their bombs, looked to the right and left, 
where German heavies were falling, cursed the chatter of 
machine-guns from Fricourt village, and said "Come on, 
lads!" to the men about them. Not one man faltered or 
turned back, or lingered with the doubt that he had gone 
far enough. 

They stumbled forward over the shell craters, over dead 
bodies, over indescribable things. Crucifix Trench was 
reached. It was full of Germans, who were hurling bombs 
from it, from that trench and the sunken road near by. 

The Yorkshire boys went through a barrage of bombs, 
hurled their own, worried through the broken parapets and 
over masses of tumbled earth, and fought single fights with 



THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT FRICOURT 83 

big Germans, like terrier dogs hunting rats and worrying 
them. Parties bombed their way down the sunken road. 

Those who fell, struck by German bombs, shouted "Get on 
to 'em, lads," to others who came up. In bits of earthwork 
German heads looked up, white German faces, bearded, and 
covered with clay like dead men risen. 

They put up trembling hands and cried their word of 
comradeship to those enemy boys. 

"Well, that's all right," said a Yorkshire captain. "We've 
got the Crucifix. And meanwhile our guns are giving us 
the devil." 



Our gunners did not know that Crucifix Trench was 
taken. Some of our shells were dropping very close. 

"It's time for a red light," said the Yorkshire captain. 
He had a bullet in his ribs, and was suffering terribly, but 
he still commanded his men. 

A red rocket went up, high through the smoke over all 
this corner of the battlefield. Somewhere it was seen by 
watchful eyes, in some O.P. or by some flying fellow. Our 
guns lifted. The shells went forward, crashing into Shelter 
Wood beyond. 

"Good old gunners!" said a sergeant. "By God, they're 
playing the game to-day !" 

But other men had seen the red rocket above Crucifix 
Trench. It stood in the sky like a red eye looking down 
upon the battlefield. The German gunners knew that the 
British were in Crucifix Trench. They lowered their guns 
a point or two, shortening their range, and German shells 
came crumping the earth, on either side, registering the 
ground. 

"And where do we go next, captain?" asked a Yorkshire 
boy. It seemed he felt restless where he was. 

The captain thought Shelter Wood might be a good place 



84 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

to see. He chose ten men to see it with him, and they were 
very wiUing. 

With the bullet in his ribs — it hurt him horribly — he 
climbed out of Crucifix Trench, and crawled forward, with 
his ten men to the wood beyond. 

It was full of Germans. At the south-west corner of it 
was a redoubt, with machine-guns and a bomb-store. The 
German bombers were already flinging their grenades across 
to the Crucifix. 

The wounded captain said that ten men were not enough 
to take Shelter Wood — it would need a thousand men, per- 
haps, so he crawled back with the others. 

They stayed all night in Crucifix Trench, and it was a 
dreadful night. At ten o'clock the enemy opened an intense 
bombardment of heavies and shrapnel, and maintained it 
at full pitch until two o'clock next morning. 

There were 900 men up there and in the neighbourhood. 
When morning came there were not so many, but the others 
were eager to get out and get on. 

The Yorkshire spirit was unbeaten. The grit of the 
North Country was still there in the morning after the first 
assault. 



Queer adventures overtook men who played a lone hand 
in this darkness and confusion of battle. One man I met 
to-day — true Yorkshire, with steel in his eyes and a burr 
in his speech — it was strange to hear the Saxon words he 
used — rushed with some of his friends into Birch Tree 
Wood, which was not captured until two days later. 

There were many Germans there, but not visible. Sud- 
denly the Yorkshire lad found himself quite alone, his com- 
rades having escaped from a death-trap, for the wood was 
being shelled — as I saw myself that day — with an intense 
fire from our guns. 

The lonely boy, who was a machine-gunner without his 



THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT FRICOURT 85 

gun, thought that things were "pretty thick," as, indeed, 
they were, but he decided that the risks of death were less 
if he stayed still than if he moved. 

Presently, as he crouched low, he saw a German coming. 
He was crawling along on his hands and knees, and blood 
was oozing from him. As he crawled, a young Yorkshire 
soldier, also badly wounded, passed him at a little distance in 
the wood. 

The German stared at him. Then he raised himself, 
though still on his knees, and fired at the boy with his re- 
volver, so that he fell dead. The German went on his 
hands again to go on with his crawling, but another shot 
ripped through the trees, and he crawled no more. 

It was fired by the man who had been left alone — the 
young man I saw to-day. "I killed the brute," he said, "and 
I'm glad of it." 

Our shells were bursting very fiercely over the wood, 
slashing off branches and ploughing-up the earth. The 
lonely boy searched about for a dug-out and found one. 
When he went down into it he saw three dead Germans 
there, and he sat with them for more than eight hours while 
our bombardment lasted. There was another lad I met 
who was also a machine-gunner, and alone in the battle 
zone. He was alone when fourteen of his comrades had 
been knocked out. But single-handed he carried and served 
his gun, from one place to another, all through the day, and 
part of next day, sniping odd parties of Germans with 
bursts of bullets. 

Another sturdy fellow I met came face to face with a Ger- 
man, who called out to him in perfect English. 

"Don't shoot. I was brought up in England and played 
footer for Bradford City. ... By Jove! I know your 
face, old man. Weren't you at the Victoria Hotel, Shef- 
field?" 

It was a queer meeting on a battlefield. One of the grim- 
mest things I have heard was told me by another York- 
shire boy. A German surrendered, and then suddenly, as 



86 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

this lad approached to make him prisoner, pulled the det- 
onator of a bomb and raised it to throw. 

"I put my bayonet right close to him so suddenly that 
he was terrified, and forgot to fling his bomb. Then a 
queer kind of look came into his eyes. He remembered 
that the blooming bomb was going off. It went off, and 
blew him to bits." 

That is war. And the men who have told me these 
things are young men who do not like the things they have 
seen. But, because it is war, they go through to the last 
goal with a courage that does not quail. 

The men of this division next day took Shelter Wood 
and Fricourt, and captured many prisoners. 



VIII 
HOW THE PRUSSIANS FELL AT CONTALMAISON 



I 

July 8 

After the first four days of battle there was something like 
a lull of twenty-four hours — a lull filled with the great noise 
of guns — which was broken by fresh assaults made by our 
troops in the direction of Mametz Wood and Contalmaison. 
For two days now — on Thursday and Friday — there has 
been severe fighting in that territory, and although we lost 
Contalmaison last night after taking it in the morning, it 
is, I am sure, only a temporary set-back, for our position is 
strong in its neighbourhood, and great loss has been in- 
flicted upon the enemy. The battle of Contalmaison, not yet 
finished, will be a distinct and important episode in the 
history of this campaign. 

I was able to see something of the battle^ — ^^all the fierce 
picture of our shell fire — but, at the time, with no accurate 
idea of what was really happening beyond our guns, and 
with that sense of confusion and mystery which all soldiers 
have when they are on the battlefield, knowing very little 
of what is going on to the left or right of them, not know- 
ing what is happening to themselves, or why they stand 
where they do, or what order will next come to them, or 
whether our men are doing well or badly. 



It was early in the morning that I went out beyond many 
of our batteries and watched the bombardment that was to 



87 



88 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

precede the Infantry attacks upon the enemy's positions in 
front of Contalmaison and, to the right, on Mametz Wood, 
where some of our men held the south-west corner. There 
were large bodies of troops about on high ground where 
our old trenches are, and bunched about In groups beyond, 
up a slope leading to the line from which our attack was 
to be made. They seemed to have nothing in the world to 
do except hang about in a casual way. Many of them 
were lying on the grass, or along roadsides, asleep. Not all 
the roar of the guns made them turn uneasily. They had 
been there all night, waiting to go up in support, and now, 
dog-tired, they were taking their chance of rest. 
* It was not quite a safe spot for sleep. Although the 
enemy's guns were busy on different places, there was no 
knowing whether they might not shift a point or two this 
way at any moment. The roadway had already tempted 
some of their shells earlier in the morning. Tall beech 
trees here and there had been cut clean in half, and a litter 
of branches and foHage lay below the broken stumps. There 
were new shell craters in the field over the way, just where 
a company of R.A.M.C. men had sat down on their stretch- 
ers, waiting for work. But nobody seemed to worry. 

A captain of Pioneers spoke to me and said, "Any news?" 

He was a middle-sized, keen-looking man, with a humor- 
ous look in his grey eyes which were shaded by a steel hel- 
met, khaki covered. He was as muddy as a scarecrow, 
and shivered a little after his night in the rain. 

"Dashed if I know what's happening," he said ; "one never 
does. Our fellows are supposed to be going up, but no 
orders come along. There's our adjutant, waiting for 'em." 
I looked across the road and saw the adjutant. He was 
lying on his back, quite straight, at full length, with his 
head on his pack and his waterproof coat over him. He 
was profoundly asleep. 

The Pioneer captain pointed towards little masses of 
men below the crest of the rising ground, beyond which 
were hell-fires. 



THE PRUSSIANS AT CONTALMAISON 89 

"I thought they would go up an hour ago, but they're still 
waiting, poor lads. I expect they'll go in it all right in less 
than half an hour." 

He stared towards Mametz village. It was under a pall 
of greenish smoke, and not a minute passed without a big 
German shell bursting over it and raising black columns of 
cloud. 

"Nasty kind of place," said the Pioneer. "Thought I 
should have to spend the night there. Glad I didn't, though ! 
And such a night! I never saw anything like it. Exactly 
like hell, only worse ; a sky full of shells, and lights bursting 
like blazes. A regular Brock's benefit. . . . Hulloa, some 
of 'em are going up." 

The men who were in small bunches on the low ground 
were getting into a new kind of order. They were mov- 
ing up towards the crest in extended formation. . . . 

A German shell was coming our way. I heard its high 
gobbling note, and shifted my steel hat a little, and hoped 
it might serve. There was a nasty crash fifty yards away 
below the road, where some of the men were bunched. . . . 
A whistle sounded, and the R.A.M.C. men, who had been 
squatting on their stretchers, sprang up and ran, carrying 
their stretchers, down a side track. They had found some 
work to do. 

Two other shells came closer, and we changed our posi- 
tion a little. It was getting rather hot. 



But not so hot as other places, compared with which our 
ground was Paradise. Mametz Village, behind our lines 
now, was being shelled heavily by the enemy, and was a 
very ugly spot, but even that was a health resort, as soldiers 
say, compared with any of the German positions in the 
neighbourhood of Contalmaison. Our guns were concen- 
trating their fire along a line north of Birch Tree Wood' 



90 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

from Horseshoe Trench, now in our hands, across to Peak 
Wood and Quadrangle Trench away to Mametz Wood on 
the right. We were also putting a terrific barrage round 
the village of Contalmaison and Acid Drop Copse. Our 
batteries, heavy and light, seemed to be in rings round this 
storm centre. 

The heavies were away behind, and I could only know 
their existence by the great shells that came rushing over- 
head, from invisible places at long range, with a long drone 
like some great harp plucked by old god Thor, as each shell 
crossed the valley and smashed over the enemy's lines. They 
came in great numbers and from half the points of the 
compass, to fall upon that one stretch of ground a mile or 
so broad. Our field guns were not invisible. 

I could see them winking and blinking in the valleys 
and up the slopes as far as the eye could range. They fired 
salvoes or rounds with sharp and separated rat-tat-tats. 
Every kind of gun and howitzer — old "Grandmothers," the 
long six-inchers, four-point-sevens, French soixante-quinze, 
and our own eighteen pounders — played the devil over the 
German lines. 

I think it was about eleven that they lifted and put a dense 
barrage of shells further back. For the first time in my ex- 
perience, this moment was perceptible. It was a kind of 
hush for just a second, as though all the guns were taking 
breath. Then the tumult began again, while the infantry 
went forward into and through the smoke. A little while 
later I saw rockets high above the smoke in the direction 
of Contalmaison. Something told me, though without any 
certainty, that our men were in that village. 



From a visual point of view that is all I can tell, but to-day 
have seen some of the officers who were directing this bat- 
tle, and what happened is now much clearer, though not 



THE PRUSSIANS AT CONTALMAISON 91 

absolutely clear in all its details. The day before yesterday, 
after heavy fighting in the early stages of the battle, some 
of our battalions took possession of the Horseshoe Trench 
to the north-west of Birch Tree Wood and to the south-west 
of Contalmaison. Other battalions to the right were stretch- 
ing along a line through Birch Tree Wood to the south of 
Mametz Wood. A curious affair was happening in a trench 
called the Old Jaeger Trench, running out of the Horseshoe 
towards a German redoubt to the west of Peak Wood. 

Part of this trench was held by the troops on the left and 
part by the troops on the right, and both reported and be- 
lieved that they held all of it. The truth was that a gap 
in the middle was still held by a party of Germans, who 
had machine-guns and bombs with which, presently, they 
made themselves unpleasant. Orders were sent to clear 
the trench of these ugly customers, and it was done by the 
troops on the left. Then orders were given to clear for- 
ward to a triangle trench to the right of the Old Jaeger. 
It was a strong redoubt, and the Germans defended them- 
selves so tenaciously at this point that it changed hands 
three times before our men held it for good. 

It yielded finally when the troops on the right fought 
their way up to Peak Wood, captured it, and enfiladed the 
enemy with machine-gun fire. At that moment they saw 
their position was hopeless, and came running out with 
their hands up. Further on there was a machine-gun em- 
placement which was giving us a good deal of trouble, but 
this was bombarded and rushed, and on the evening of 
July 6 the machine-gun, to use the words of one of the 
officers, was "done in." 

Yesterday morning the attack following the bombardment 
extended from these points south-west of Contalmaison 
away to the right. Unfortunately, although the fortune 
of war favoured us in another way, the troops on the 
right were unable to make much headway. But at this time 
an extraordinary, and, for the enemy, a terrible, thing hap- 
pened. Some battalions of the Prussian Guard Reserve, 



92 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

hurriedly brought up a day or two ago from Valenciennes, 
and thrown into this battlefield without maps or guidance 
or local knowledge, advanced to meet our men on the right, 
and walked up, by an awful stroke of chance, straight into 
the terrific barrage which our guns had just started round 
Contalmaison. A whole battalion was cut to pieces. 

Many others suffered frightful things. I am told by some 
of the prisoners that they lost three-quarters of their num- 
ber in casualties, and although this may be an exaggeration 
— prisoners always have the tendency to exaggerate their 
losses — it is certain that a mass of men were killed and 
wounded. As soon as our barrage lifted our troops on 
the right, most of them men of Yorkshire and northern 
counties, swept forward and without great trouble entered 
Contalmaison and Bailiff Wood to the north-west. It was 
their lights which I had seen signalling through the smoke. 

It was a magnificent success, not too dearly bought. But 
just when our position looked full of promise for the 
morrow disappointing news came in last night. It is here 
that the details of what happened are not clear. Germans 
were reported to be streaming out of Mametz Wood towards 
Contalmaison, apparently to make a counter-attack there. 
The enemy's guns were shelling the place. Rain fell heavily, 
and our men who had fought so well and so long were 
exhausted. 

Owing to the difficulty of communication and other 
troubles which happen at those times, the situation became 
confused, and late in the evening it was reported that Con- 
talmaison had been evacuated as a temporary measure for 
defensive reasons. 

At the same time it was also reported that Mametz Wood 
had been so heavily shelled by our guns that much damage 
had been inflicted upon the Germans inside, some of whom 
had escaped to our lines. We are now holding the outskirts 
of Contalmaison, in, or in the neighbourhood of, the ceme- 
tery, and, I believe. Acid Drop Copse, so that we are in a 
sound position for further attack. 



THE PRUSSIANS AT CONTALMAISON 98 



A large number of prisoners were taken, and they came 
straggling back over the battlefield in miserable little groups. 
Some of them carried our wounded on stretchers or on their 
backs, and our men carried their wounded. 

They were the remnants of the 3rd Prussian Guards Di- 
vision which has been so utterly broken that it no longer 
exists as a fighting unit. Those who did not fall into our 
hands have been withdrawn from the line. The moral 
of the men as well as their fighting force has been smashed. 
Even the officers admit that they have no more stomach for 
the fight, and several of the men with whom I spoke to-day 
were frank in saying that they are glad to be prisoners 
to be safe at last from the frightfulness of this war. 

Some of them told me that after leaving Valenciennes a 
few days ago, after our attack had started, they were 
brought to Cambrai, and while the officers were sent on by 
motor-car they marched a long distance through unknown 
country to the front. They do not know the names of the 
villages through which they passed, their officers had no 
maps, and they had an ominous feeling that they were going 
to their doom. But the strength of our artillery, and its 
deadly accuracy of aim, surprised them. 

They did not know the English had such gunners. Still 
more were they surprised by the dash of our infantry when 
they heard that they had against them "men of the 'New 
Army.' " "We thought they were Guards," said these Prus- 
sian prisoners, who belonged chiefly to the Lehr, Grenadiers 
and Fusiliers — all Guards' Divisions — the 70th Jaeger and 
the iioth, 114th and 190th regiments of the line. Some 
of them I spoke to were Poles from Silesia — "ich kann nur 
ein wenig Deutsch sprechen" (I can only speak a little Ger- 
man), said one of them. Yet they were tall, hefty men of 
good physique and well-fed. Some of them were middle- 
aged fellows, and fathers of families, corresponding to the 



94 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

French Territorials. They spoke of their wives and chil- 
dren, and their tired, dazed eyes (for they were just down 
from the field of fire) lighted up at the thought of going 
home again after the war. 

"God send a quick ending to the war !" said one of them, 
and he spoke the words as a prayer with his hands up- 
raised. 

I sat in a little dug-out, bomb-proof, perhaps, but not 
sound-proof, because the noise of guns was appallingly close 
and loud while some of the men were being brought in to be 
examined by a bright-eyed officer, who spoke their dialects 
as well as their language, and had an easy way with him 
so that they were not frightened. 

They answered frankly, in a manly way, and were grate- 
ful for our treatment of them. A queer scene inside these 
Walls of sandbags, lighted by German candles, filled with all 
sorts of litter from German pockets — great clasp-knives, 
leaden spoons, cartridge clips, compasses, watches, pencils. 
One of the investigating officers was the son of a famous 
musician, and seemed to find an intense interest in his job, 
though new batches of prisoners keep arriving through day 
and night, so that his meals and his sleep are interrupted. 

But with his brother officers he is accumulating a store 
of information, and sees all the drama of the war, and all 
its misery for the enemy, betv\feen these sand-bags, and in 
the dim candlelight which flickers upon the worn faces of 
German soldiers taken an hour before up there where the 
shells are falling. 



IX 

A CAMEO OF WAR 



I 

July 9 
Slowly, but quite steadily, we are drawing our lines closer 
about the enemy's strong places along the whole extent 
of our attacking front in order that one by one he must 
abandon them. Last night our troops captured new trenches 
about Ovillers-La Boiselle, so that the pressure upon that 
place is tighter, and during the past eighteen hours we have 
established ourselves in the Bois des Trones, and its neigh- 
bourhood to the east of Montauban. 

The meaning of our attacking methods and of the hard 
fighting at different points may not be clear to people who do 
not realise the position which our men have to storm. It has 
often been said that the enemy's lines, which stretch from 
the sea to the Vosges, are one great fortress, and this is 
true, but it is more essentially and even technically true of 
the line through which we broke on the first day of July. 

The great German salient which curves round from Gom- 
mecourt to Fricourt is like a chain of mediaeval fortresses 
connected by earthworks and tunnels. The fortresses, or 
strong places as we now call them, are the ruined villages — 
stronger in defence than any old tower because they are 
filled with machine-guns, trench-mortars, and other deadly 
engines — of Gommecourt, Beaumont-Hamel, Thiepval, 
Ovillers, La Boiselle and Fricourt. 

In spite of the superb courage of those British battalions 
which flung themselves against those strongholds on the 
left side of the German salient they did not fall, but breaches 

95 



96 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

were made in their defences which are now being widened 
and deepened. On the southern side, where the attack suc- 
ceeded, La Boiselle and Fricourt and further eastwards 
Mametz and Montauban, are ours, and the attack is pushing 
further in to turn the strong places on the left from within 
the fortress walls, as it were, while they are being weakened 
by assaults from without, gradually putting the strangle-grip 
upon them. If we have luck and keep striking deeper into 
the salient, as we have done during the past twenty- four 
hours at Contalmaison and Ovillers, it would seem to me as 
if the strong places on the left must either be evacuated by 
the enemy or surrounded and taken, with their imprisoned 
troops, by us. 

I saw the scene of this struggle for the enemy's strong- 
holds to-day almost as if I were looking into the mirror of 
the Lady of Shalott. It seemed like that, strangely unreal, 
as though in an image — and yet terribly real and vivid — be- 
cause I came upon it suddenly, by accident, arranged for me 
by a gap in a hedge and by two trees on each side of the gap, 
like the frame of a picture. 

I had been up to the lines in search of an officer whose 
headquarters is in dug-outs below the crest of a hill. Be- 
yond this crest and another one beyond that the fires of hate 
were burning all right. I could tell that by the smoke 
clouds which came black, and white, and green, into the 
fleecy sky of this July day in France, and by the noise of the 
guns all about me. But I did not trouble to climb to the 
crest. There were interesting things to see below and fine 
men whom I wanted to meet again before they go nearer 
to those fires. 

I passed two friends on the roadway riding in the centre 
of a long column of troops, and when I waved my hands 
to them and shouted "Good luck!" they turned in their sad- 
dles and waved back and smiled in a way that one remembers 
through a lifetime. I did not trouble to climb the crest be- 
cause there were some captured German guns below it worth 
seeing as the first fruits of victory. 



A CAMEO OF WAR 97 

They were being fastened to our own gun-carriages and 
taken off to the place where such trophies go, cheered by 
French townsfolk on the way. Queer, beastly things were 
some of these captured engines. There were long wooden 
barrels hooped with steel, and with a touch-hole to fire the 
charge for a "plum-pudding" bomb large enough to blow up 
ten yards of trench — as primitive as the engines of war used 
in the fifteenth century. 

It was on the way back that I came upon the gap in the 
hedge. I passed camps of men and horses, masses of guns 
and long lines of dug-outs in chalk banks, where soldiers 
sat in the entries on this Sunday afternoon, smoking their 
pipes with an air of profound peace in spite of the noise of 
shell-fire ; and large bodies of splendid troops, English and 
Scottish, tramping up the roads, all powdered with white 
dust, or lying under the shadows of wayside trees, sleeping 
on their backs with the sun full on their bronzed, sweat-be- 
grimed faces. It was the madding crowd of war, with a 
tangle of traffic on the roads, and kicking mules making 
beasts of themselves at the sight of a motor-car, and artillery 
wagons with creaking axles plunging through it all under 
the daring guidance of red-faced boys with short whips. 

Turning off the road, away from all this turmoil, and 
presently, through the gap in the hedge, I saw, quite unex- 
pectedly, the scene of war across the fields in front of me, 
all gold with that weed which is ruining so many harvest 
fields of France. It was Mametz Wood. I knew at once 
the queer shape of it with a great bite out of its western 
side. In spite of all our shell fire it is still thick with foliage, 
upon which the sunlight lay, casting a great black shadow 
underneath. Just below it was Peak Wood, a row of broken 
trees by a sunken road, and a triangle trench, for which our 
men fought desperately, so that it changed hands three times 
before they won it finally, on Friday afternoon. 

To the left of Mametz Wood and on a line with it was 
Contalmaison, and on the left of that Bailiff Wood, which 
we captured and lost again the day before yesterday, and 



98 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

then further left Ovillers-La Boiselle, and completing the 
crescent, La Boiselle itself. 



Between the gap in the hedge I saw again one of the 
world's great battlefields, and every detail of it was so clear- 
ly and sharply defined in the sunlight that it was like a Pre- 
Raphaelite picture painted in vivid colours. I could count 
the shell-holes in the roofs of Contalmaison village, and 
the chateau there, standing to the right of a little wood, 
was brought so closely forward by a stereoscopic effect that 
I could look into the blackness of its broken windows. 

Down below me were our trenches, and I saw our men 
in them. Some of them were outside the trenches, strolling 
about in the open, in little groups, or walking about on a 
lone track, as though taking a quiet half -hour on this Sun- 
day afternoon. 

And yet they were in the centre of the battlefield, and 
over their heads came an incessant flight of shells, our shells 
which I could see falling in the German lines, and in the 
fields about them German shells, bursting with dull crashes 
and with clouds of black and greenish smoke. All the power 
of destruction was at work, but because of the utter calm 
and beauty of the sky and the golden light over all the scene 
it seemed to me, standing on the edge of it, less deadly, like 
a dream of war. 

It was no dream. Three of our shells followed each other 
in a group and burst with one explosion against the left- 
hand tower of Contalmaison chateau, smashing off a turret 
as though it were a card-castle. 

Our shells were flinging up fountains of black earth and 
smoke in the German lines beyond — at Posieres. All round 
the battlefield there were the black clouds of shell fire break- 
ing and rising and spreading over Bailiff Wood, at Ovillers, 
and between the broken tree trunks of La Boiselle. Men 



A CAMEO OF WAR 99 

were being killed as usual, la-bas. But our shells were doing 
most of the damage. 

An extraordinary thing happened as I looked across the 
chateau of Contalmaison. The earth seemed suddenly to 
open in the enemy's lines and let forth the smoke of its 
inner fires. It gushed out in great round, dense masses, 
and rose to a vast height, spreading like the foliage of some 
gigantic tree. It was not a mine. 

The explosion from a mine flings up a black mass- with 
jagged edges like a piece of black-cardboard cut into teeth. 
But this was a regular uprising of curly black clouds of 
great volume, getting denser, and coming continuously. I 
watched it for twenty minutes or more, and could not make 
out its meaning, but guessed that we had blown up an am- 
munition store. 

Two great explosions which came quite a few seconds 
after the first vomit of smoke suggested this. So I went 
away from the picture through the gap in the trees. Down 
in the valley where I passed the enemy's shells were coming 
rather near. A heavy crump burst on a knoll close by, and 
some officers and men were watching with that curious smile 
men have at times when they know their lives depend upon 
a freak of chance. It is an ironical smile, and rather grim. 



X 

THE ASSAULT ON CONTALMAISON 



I 

July 9 
I HAD an idea that there would be "something doing" to-day 
at Contalmaison, and I went over the fields towards it, past 
some of our batteries, past columns of troops marching with 
their bands along the roads which powder them with white 
blinding dust, past great camps and ammunition columns, 
and litters of empty shell cases remaining over from the 
great bombardment, and past bodies of soldiers stretched 
out upon the grass and sleeping in the warm sunlight close 
behind the fighting lines, until I came to a little crest looking 
down to Contalmaison village, and the woods about it. 

Mametz Wood was very quiet this afternoon. As neither 
side could see exactly the position of its troops underneath 
the heavy foliage — our men, who were fighting last night, 
hold a line about halfway through — the gunners were chary 
of shelling it severely. Now and again a burst of shrapnel 
smoke puffed against the dark background of the trees, and 
the shell slashed through the branches, but that was not 
often, and the wood seemed very peaceful. Looking at it 
one's imagination found it difficult to realise that perhaps 
there were men there who had dug themselves into the 
earth beneath the spreading roots, and that British and 
German patrols were feeling their way, perhaps, from one 
tree to another, through the glades, until they came into 
touch and exchanged some rifle shots before falling back 
to their own line. I could only guess at that, and could see 

100 



THE ASSAULT ON CONTALMAISON 101 

nothing but the tight foliage, yellow in the sun and black 
in the shadows. 

There were plenty of shells falling elsewhere, and it 
seemed to me that the enemy had brought up new batteries 
to strengthen his defence. His shell-fire was certainly more 
intense, and wider-spreading, than during the past few days 
round here. He was bombarding our positions from La 
Boiselle to Montauban very fiercely. The poor broken wood 
of La Boiselle, which our men captured after desperate 
fighting, was being searched by his black shrapnel, and every 
now and then by one of his "universals," which broke with 
a vivid cloud of greenish fumes, very prolonged in density, 
and forming fantastic shapes as it dissolved. One such 
cloud, metallic in the brilliance of its green, was like a 
winged woman with a Medusa face. 

High explosives were falling into Montauban village, rais- 
ing volumes of rose-coloured clouds, beautiful in the sun- 
light. I think it must have been the dust of red bricks flung 
up from ruined houses. 



At half-past three in the afternoon the enemy put a very 
heavy barrage in a straight line below Contalmaison. One 
by one the shells burst, and so quickly down the line and 
back again that they formed a wall of black smoke with only 
a few gaps. 

"It is so nice to get a little fresh air!" said a young 
gunner of^cer who was next to me, reporting for his bat- 
tery, which speaks from afar with a very gruff voice. "Dur- 
ing the first few days of the 'show' I lived indoors" — he 
pointed to the dark entry of a dug-out — "but now I'm get- 
ting sunburnt again. The men enjoy this open fighting. 
Look at 'em !" 

There were men moving about the battlefield utterly re- 
gardless of the trenches — the old German trenches, marked 
by billows of brown earth (brown because of our gun-fire 



102 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

which ploughed it up), and more regular lines of white 
earth-works, which were our own parapets before the ad- 
vance. A long column of them was winding very slowly 
round towards Contalmaison. 

"Looks as if they were going up to support an attack," 
said an officer close to me. 

Other groups of khaki-coloured men were moving over 
the ground which one sees southward from the tall chimney 
of Pozieres village which we were bombarding heavily. 

I thought back to the Ypres salient for a moment. Men 
do not move about so freely there ! Or between Loos and 
Hulluch, where over the wide barren stretch of desolation no 
human being is ever seen, or, if seen, killed. But — "it is 
nice to get a little fresh air" after the imprisonment in 
the trenches, and this open warfare is enormously better. 
It is better even to die in the open, with the wind upon one's 
face, standing among the poppies, underneath the blue sky, 
which to-day was glorious with white snow-mountains piled 
high with dazzling peaks in its sea of blue and sunlight. 

And so our men are touched with a kind of spiritual joy 
to be fighting above ground again instead of crouching in 
ditches — though personally I like a handy hole at times. 

In the very centre of the battlefield for which some of our 
men fought and died a day or two ago, one tall fellow 
was signalling to somebody about something. Now and 
then a German shell fell dangerously close to his position 
sending up a fountain of earth and smoke, but he kept talk- 
ing with his dot-and-dash to a far and invisible friend. It 
seemed an interesting monologue, as though he had im- 
portant things to tell. It seemed to be addressed to the 
ruins of Contalmaison. There were moments when its old 
French chateau, set in a little wood, was lit up by a splash 
of golden light as the white clouds drifted by, so that I 
could almost count its bricks, and could see how the shells 
which I watched yesterday had opened its roofs. But the 
left hand tower was knocked off this morning by a direct 
hit from that same battery whose fire was being observed 



THE ASSAULT ON CONTALMAISON 103 

by the young gunner officer with whom I sat to-day. It is 
a wonder the shell did not smash the whole chateau to a 
pitiful ruin, but it took the tower en passant as chess players 
say. 

At four o'clock our guns concentrated upon Contalmaison, 
Acid Drop Copse — the poor little straggly wood to the 
right of Mametz — and the German trenches defending the 
Contalmaison ridge. Smoke belched over the battlefield, 
and the song of the shells was loud and high. It was under 
those shells falling beyond them and through the smoke 
that a body of our men moved forward to the assault upon 
the village. 

3 

July io 

The village of Contalmaison is ours again. Whether we 
ever held it before, by more than handfuls of men, who went 
in and went out, is doubtful. Certainly some men succeeded 
in getting there from Caterpillar Wood and Acid Drop 
Copse, because I met them afterwards with wounds in their 
bodies, but it is difficult to know what happened. 

One can only guess that Germans came up from their 
dug-outs after our men had penetrated the outskirts and 
made use of the darkness with their machine-guns and 
bombs. 

What happened last night is clear enough. I have already 
described in a previous dispatch how we concentrated our 
fire upon the positions in front of the village and then 
shelled the village itself with terrific intensity. 

I saw the beginning of this bombardment, and watched 
our men going up to support the attack which was to 
follow. It was begun when fresh troops who had been 
brought up to help the tired men who had been fighting in 
this part of the line under heavy shell-fire for several days 
advanced under the cover of our guns to the left and right 
of the village. 

It was already hemmed in on both sides, for other British 



104 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

troops were in firm possession of Bailiff Wood to the left, 
and during the evening, by a series of bombing attacks, 
Mametz Wood to the right had been almost cleared of 
Germans, who are now only in the outer fringe of it. 

The enemy in Contalmaison knew that their position was 
hopeless. When our guns lifted they heard the cheers of 
our infantry on both sides of the village, and many of them 
— at least many of those who were still alive and unwounded 
— ^streamed out of the village in disorderly retreat, only to 
be caught behind by our extended barrages between Contal- 
maison, Pozieres and Bazentin-le-Petit, so that their rout 
became a shambles. 

Our men were quickly into the village, and having learnt 
a lesson by the experience of other troops at other places 
made a thorough search of machine-gun emplacements and 
dug-outs, so that there should be no further trouble with 
this wasps' nest. 



The men left in Contalmaison were in a dreadful state, 
having suffered to the very limit of human endurance, and 
beyond. They were surprised to find themselves living 
enough to be taken prisoners. 

One of these men with whom I talked this morning told 
me a tragic tale. He spoke a little Enghsh, having been a 
cabinet-maker in the Tottenham Court Road some years 
ago before he went back to Wiirttemberg, where, when the 
war began, he was, as he said, taken and put in a uniform 
and told to fight, though it was not his trade, poor devil. 

With other men of the 122nd (Bavarian) Regiment he 
went into Contalmaison five days ago. Soon the rations they 
had brought with them were finished, and owing to our 
ceaseless gun-fire it was impossible to get fresh supplies. 
They suffered great agonies of thirst, and the numbers of 
their dead and wounded increased steadily. 

"There was a hole in the ground," said this German cabi- 



THE ASSAULT ON CONTALMAISON 105 

net-maker, whose head was bound with a bloody bandage 
and who was dazed and troubled when I talked with him. 
"It 'was a dark hole which held twenty men, all lying in a 
heap together, and that was the only dug-out for my com- 
pany, so that there was not room for more than a few. 

"It was necessary to take turns in this shelter, while out- 
side the English shells were coming and bursting every- 
where. Two or three men were dragged out to make room 
for two or three others. 

"Then those who went outside were killed or wounded. 
Some of them had their heads blown off, and some of them 
had both legs torn off, and some of them their arms. 

"But we went on taking turns in the hole, although those 
who went outside knew that it was their turn to die, very 
likely. At last most of those who came into the hole were 
wounded, some of them badly, so that we lay in blood. 

"There was only one doctor there, an 'unterofifizier' " — he 
pointed to a man who lay asleep on the ground, face down- 
wards — "and he bandaged some of us till he had no more 
bandages. 

"Then, last night, we knew the end was coming. Your 
guns began to fire all together — the dreadful 'trommel- 
feuer,' as we call it — and the shells burst and smashed up 
the earth about us. 

"We stayed down in the hole waiting for the end. Then 
we heard your soldiers shouting. Presently two of them 
came down into our hole. They were two boys and they 
had their pockets full of bombs. 

"They had bombs in their hands also, and they seemed 
to wonder whether they would kill us. But we were all 
wounded, nearly all, and we cried 'Kameraden!' . . . And 
now we are prisoners — and I am thirsty." 

Other prisoners told me that the effect of our fire was 
terrible in Contalmaison, and that at least half of their 
men holding it were killed or wounded, so that when our 
soldiers entered last night they walked over the bodies of 
the dead. 



106 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

These men who had escaped were in a pitiful condition. 
They lay on the ground utterly exhausted most of them, 
and — that was strange — with their faces to the earth. Per- 
haps it was to blot out the vision of things seen. 

I shall remember the cabinet-maker of the Tottenham 
Court Road. In spite of the clay which caked his face 
and clothes and the bloody rag round his head he was a 
handsome bearded fellow with blue eyes which once or 
twice lighted up with a tragic smile, as when I asked him 
when he thought the war would end. 

"In 19 1 5," he said, "when I was wounded at Ypres, I 
thought the war would end in a few months. And a little 
while ago I thought so again!" 

Then he muttered something to himself, but loudly 
enough for me to hear the words — "Surely we cannot go on 
much longer?" 

I left these men, and further down the road saw many 
more prisoners. There were nearly three hundred of them 
marching down a side track, between some ripening corn, 
under mounted escort, their grey-blue uniforms hardly 
visible until I was closer to them against the background of 
the wheat. 

Most of them were young, healthy-looking men, who 
walked briskly, and it was only a few behind who limped 
as they walked, and looked broken and beaten men. 



It was a good day for us in prisoners, for about 500 have 
come down from Contalmaison, Mametz Wood and the 
Trones Wood as living proofs of our advance in all those 
places. 

All the prisoners speak of the terror of our artillery fire, 
and documents captured in their dug-outs tell the same tale 
in words which reveal the full horror of bombardment. 

"We are quite shut off from the rest of the world," 



THE ASSAULT ON CONTALMAISON lOTT 

wrote a German soldier on the day before our great attack. 
"Nothing comes to us; no letters. The English keep such 
a barrage on our approaches, it is terrible. To-morrow 
morning it will be seven days since this bombardment be- 
gan ; we cannot hold out much longer. Everything is shot 
to pieces." 

"Our thirst is terrible," wrote another man. "We hunt 
for water, and drink it out of shell-holes." 

Many of the men speak of the torture of thirst which 
they suffered during our bombardment. 

"Every one of us in these five days has become years 
older. We hardly know ourselves. Bechtel said that, in 
these five days, he lost lo lbs. Hunger and thirst have also 
contributed their share to that. Hunger would be easily 
borne, but the thirst makes one almost mad. 

"Luckily it rained yesterday, and the water in the shell- 
holes, mixed with the yellow shell sulphur, tasted as good 
as a bottle of beer. To-day we got something to eat. It 
was impossible before to bring food up into the front line 
under the violent curtain fire of the enemy." 

One other out of hundreds tells all in a few words : 

"We came into the front line ten days ago. During those 
ten days I have suffered more than any time during the last 
two years. The dug-outs are damaged in places, and the 
trenches are completely destroyed." 

We do not gloat over the sufferings of our enemy, though 
we must make them suffer, and go on suffering, that they 
may yield. It is the curse of war, the black horror which 
not even the heights of human courage may redeem, nor all 
the splendour of youth eager for self-sacrifice. 

I have seen things to-day before which one's soul swoons, 
and which, God willing, my pen shall write, so that men 
shall remember the meaning of war. 

But now, when these things are inevitable, we must look 
only to our progress towards the end, and to-day we have 
made good progress. 

Yesterday I wrote of the position we attacked on July 



108 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

I as a great German fortress with a chain of strongholds 
linked by underground works. 

In ten days, by the wonderful gallantry of our men and 
the great power of our guns we have smashed several of 
those forts — as strong as any on the Western front, and 
defended stubbornly by masses of guns and troops — and 
have stormed our way in so deeply that the enemy is now 
forced to fall back upon his next line of defence. 

The cost has been great, but the enemy's losses and the 
present position in which he finds himself prove the success 
of our main attack. 

For the first time since the beginning of the war the initia- 
tive has passed to us, and the German Headquarters Staff is 
hard pushed for reserves. 



XI 

THE BATTLE OF THE WOODS 



I 

July 12 
For several days now I have been giving a chronicle of hard 
fighting at several important points on the way to the second 
German line, with such scenes as one eye-witness may de- 
scribe in a great battle in which many different bodies of 
troops are engaged upon a wide front. 

The fortunes of war have varied from day to day, almost 
from hour to hour, so that positions taken one evening have 
been lost in the morning and again captured by the after- 
noon. Writing as events are happening, one's narrative 
becomes as confused as the confusion of the battlefield itself, 
where troops know nothing, or very little, of what is doing 
to their right and left, until some general scheme of opera- 
tions is completed. 

By the capture of Contalmaison and ground to each side 
of it a general scheme of progress has been achieved, and, 
although fighting does not cease about these points, it is now 
possible to give a clearer idea of the battle as it has de- 
veloped up to the present moment. 

I think it may very well be called the Battle of the 
Woods, for the chief characteristic of it has been the de- 
termined effort of our troops to take and hold a number of 
copses and small forests between the first and second Ger- 
man lines. 

On the left of Contalmaison is Bailiff Wood, north-east- 
wards of the Horseshoe Redoubt. If we could get that and 
keep it Contalmaison itself could be enfiladed and attacked 

109 



110 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

from the west as well as from the south. Away to the right 
of Contalmaison is Mametz Wood, even more important, 
both in size and position with Bernafay Wood still further 
eastwards and Trones Wood on the right again. Other 
small woods or copses to the south of Contalmaison were 
strong fighting points, from Shelter Wood to Round Wood 
and Birch Wood at the top of the Sunken Road and Peak 
Wood to the left of the Quadrangle Trench. 

Some of these places are but a few shell-slashed trees 
serving as landmarks, but Bailiff Wood, Mametz Wood, 
Bernafay Wood, and Trones Wood are still dense thickets 
under heavy foliage hiding the enemy's troops and our own, 
but giving no protection from shell-fire. 

It is for these woodlands on high ground that our men 
have been fighting with the greatest gallantry and most 
stubborn endurance, suffering more than light losses, meet- 
ing heavy counter-attacks, gaining ground, losing it, retak- 
ing it, and thrusting forward again, with a really uncon- 
querable spirit, because they know that these woods are the 
way to the second bastion of the German stronghold. 

It would be good tO' say something about the different 
battalions who have been fighting the Battle of the Woods, 
and it is hard not to give some honour to them now, by 
name. But there are reasons against it — the enemy wants 
to know their names for other reasons — and we must wait 
until some weeks have passed. They are men from nearly 
all our English counties — from Northumberland, Durham, 
Lancashire, and Yorkshire, from the Midlands, the Home 
Counties, and the "West Countrie." Welshmen were there, 
and Irish, and Highlanders and Lowlanders. It was a 
British battle, but the greater share of it fell to England 
alone, and it was English lads from the North, and English 
lads from old county towns like Worcester and Northamp- 
ton, York and Bedford, Guildford and Arundel, Norwich, 
and old London Town itself, who fought on the way to 
Contalmaison and took this stronghold of the woodlands. 

I passed some of them on the roads to-day. They were 



THE BATTLE OF THE WOODS 111 

the men who captured Contalmaison the day before yester- 
day, and they were marching with such a steady swing that 
it was hard to think they had been through such fighting 
and fatigues, and that they had left behind them many good 
fellows who will never come back along the road. 

They were bringing back trophies of victory. On their 
wagons, beside their own steel hats, were German helmets. 
Some of the enemy's machine-guns were passing back with 
them, and although the men were tired, they held their 
heads high and there was a fine pride in their eyes. An 
officer who watched them pass called out the names of their 
regiments and said, "Well done!" and one of their own 
officers waved his hand and called back, *'Cheery-0 !" It 
was the greeting of gallant fighting men. 



But before the taking of Contalmaison the day before 
yesterday there were other men who had done their best to 
take it, and did take it for a while, in spite of bad luck and 
every kind of hardship. 

Their attack depended a good deal upon the progress 
made by other troops who were fighting for Bailiff Wood 
on the left, and by troops who were attacking up to the 
line of Pearl Alley on the right. 

Neither of these attempts was successful at the time, and 
the men who had been ordered to take Contalmaison were 
not in a happy position. The weather had been foul, and it 
was this which on July 7 and 8 made all attacks difficult. 
When the troops of the attacking columns tried to get for- 
ward the ground was bogged, their rifles and bombs and 
machine-guns were covered with muddy slime, and they 
stumbled through water-logged trenches. Apart from this 
the way was perilous and tragic. 

The main trench leading up to Contalmaison was the 
Sunken Road which goes up between- Round Wood and 



112 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

Birch Wood, and this was being heavily barraged by the 
enemy's guns sweeping down the valley from Pbzieres. 

Further up and slanting right to Pearl Alley was a shal- 
low trench. 

Dead bodies lay there in the mud, and soon it was choked 
with wounded men. How could any one pass? How was 
it possible to bring up bombs and ammunition and machine 
guns and all the stores which must follow an attack ? That 
was not done, but our men, fellows who know the chimes 
of Worcester Cathedral, struggled forward over open 
ground and made a dash for Contalmaison, enfiladed by ma- 
chine-gun fire from Bailiff Wood and Mametz Wood, which 
were not yet in our hands. Round the western side of Con- 
talmaison was a shallow trench in which the enemy also 
kept his machine-guns, but when the remnants of the attack- 
ing force rushed forward these were withdrawn into the 
village, from which the German gunners swept the ground. 

It seems to me quite an astonishing feat of arms that our 
men, in such small numbers and in such adverse conditions, 
should have penetrated a good way into the village. And 
it is wonderfully to their credit that they should have taken 
eighty prisoners at such a time. 

They found themselves "up in the air," as soldiers say, 
and they were being badly hurt by machine-gun fire. It was 
a bad position, and after rummaging through some German 
dug-outs and taking their prisoners they fell back to a strong 
point to the south of the village, which they held for two 
or three days, establishing a machine-gun post which did 
valuable service in the next attack. 

They did not succeed in holding Contalmaison, and in 
war, which is a hard thing, it is only success that counts. 
But I see nothing to blame in the adventure of those com- 
panies who got through at great hazard. Luck was against 
them, and against their other battalions. Luck, and the 
weather. 



THE BATTLE OF THE WOODS 113 



In the meantime great fighting was In progress for the 
woods around. A very splendid body of men, among them 
true descendants of Sir Hugh Evans and other brave men 
across the Marches, had fought their way up on July 5 to 
Birch Tree Copse and Shelter Alley, to Quadrangle Trench 
on the 6th, then to Caterpillar Wood and Marlborough 
Wood, and they had placed, with a cunning that belongs 
to the genius of war, a machine-gun which covered an exit 
from Mametz Wood, where the enemy was still in force. 

At 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon last our troops ad- 
vanced to the capture of the wood — a wood whose bloom 
was brightened by the frightful flash of shells, whose tree 
trunks were broken and splintered and slashed by sharp 
axes hurtling through the leaves, and about whose gnarled 
roots, in shell-holes and burrows, German soldiers crouched 
with their bombs and machine-guns. A wood of terror. 
Yet not dismaying to those men of ours who went into its 
twilight. Our own guns were shelling it with a progressive 
barrage. 

Our men were to pass forward in short, sharp rushes be- 
hind the barrage, but some of them in their eagerness went 
too fast, and too far, and went through the very barrage 
itself until a signal warned a gunner officer sitting in an 
O.P. behind, so that he suddenly seized a telephone and 
whispered some words into it, and made the guns "lift" 
again. 

Waves of bullets were streaming like water through the 
trees from German machine-guns. Many of our men fell, 
and the others, checked awhile, lay down in any holes they 
could find or dig. All through the night shells broke over 
them, and through the glades there came always that hor- 
rible chatter of machine-guns. 

It was a night to which men think back through a life-time 
with a wonderment that it brought any dawn for them. 



114 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

But when dawn came their spirit was unbroken and they 
made a new attack, and went forward with bombs and bay- 
onets to the encounter of other men not less brave. Not less 
brave, in truth and in fairness to them. There was a fierce 
fight before the last of them surrendered, so that Mametz 
Wood was ours, for a while, at least. 



Meanwhile to the left of Contalmaison — our left — other 
men had worked their way up into BaiHff Wood and had 
established posts there. It was still impossible to attack 
Contalmaison from the south, and, as it happened, perhaps 
a lucky thing because the enemy had expected an attack 
from the south and had most of his machine-guns facing 
that way when our troops advanced upon him from the 
west. 

They advanced after a series of artillery barrages from a 
great number of batteries working in most perfect harmony 
with the plan of the infantry attack. 

At 4.50 the infantry went forward to their first stage in 
four waves and in extended order. They had to cover 
about 1,100 yards of open ground, and they travelled light, 
without their packs, fighting troops, searching parties for 
house-fighting, and consolidating troops. 

"They went across magnificently," said their General, and 
in spite of the enemy's shells and machine-guns penetrated 
the town. They worked across in time to the successive 
barrage which preceded them, and at 7 o'clock they had the 
whole of Contalmaison. The enemy defended himself 
bravely, and there was some fierce hand-to-hand fighting, in 
which 200 Germans were killed, refusing to surrender. 
Many prisoners were taken in the dug-outs. 

So at last the stronghold of the Woods was ours, and 
there is good hope that we shall keep it. 

One other wood in this stretch of woodlands is still not 



THE BATTLE OF THE WOODS 115 

ours. It is the Wood of Trones, where also there has been 
desperate fighting by the men who captured Bernafay Wood 
and Caterpillar Wood and the ground about Montauban, 
shelled and shelled again by the enemy, who hates to have 
us there. 

We have taken it several times, but the evening's shell 
fire forced us from part of it. When they come, our shell- 
fire slashes them to death. So much of it is No Man's Land, 
and a devilish place. 

But we hold a great stretch of ground after the Battle 
of the Woods. 



XII 
THE FIGHT FOR OVILLERS 



I 

July 13 
At Ovillers there has been fierce fighting to-day which 
has gained for us several important bits of trench and 
ground, Hnking up with other separate points already won, 
so that this German stronghold is closely besieged. 

The enemy to-day was bombarding our positions round 
Contalmaison and Mametz Wood with a most formidable 
barrage, and as I watched this from a vantage point look- 
ing across a wide stretch of the battlefields it seemed to me 
that the Germans might be preparing a strong counter- 
attack along that line. 

Nearer to Thiepval it was strangely quiet after the great 
fighting a week and more ago. 

The village of Thiepval itself was deadly quiet in the 
German lines of brown, bombarded earth, beyond our whiter 
trenches. What was once a wood there, about red-roofed 
barns and houses and an old church tower, is now only a 
number of charred stumps sticking up from the brick dust 
and ruin of these buildings. 

Behind Thiepval, captured and lost by our soldiers after 
heroic fighting and great sacrifice on July i, could be seen 
the places which the enemy is holding in his second line of 
defence, the next line of village fortresses. 

They were marked by the tall chimney of Courcelette, the 
woods of Grandcourt, and the church spire of Irles. And 
there, standing high and clear above the ridge, was one land- 
mark which has been famous before in the war and will be 

116 



THE FIGHT FOR OVILLERS 117 

again before the war is ended. It was the clock-tower of 
Bapaume, and if the sun had been shining on it we could 
have read the time of day. 

On the ridge above Thiepval were little moving figures. 

"Germans," said a sergeant with one eye to his glass. 

There was a lot of them, crawling about like ants, but 
none of our shells fell among them. All guns were busy 
on other work further to the right, where the smoke of 
great shells rose like smouldering fires over all the ground 
from Ovillers to Montauban. 



The fighting for Ovillers has been hard, bloody, and 
close. Many of our men have died to gain a yard or two 
of earth- work. There have been great adventures in the 
capturing of some bits of broken brick or the working round 
a ditch below the remnants of a wall. 

Under a steady drive of machine-gun bullets sweeping all 
the ground, men of ours from Cheshire and another Eng- 
lish county in the north have crept forward at night with a 
few hand-grenades and flung themselves against the enemy's 
bombing-posts and barricades and fought fiercely to smash 
down the sandbags or brickwork and get a few more yards 
of clear ground. 

They have sapped their way underground and blown up 
the roofs of vaults where Germans lay in hiding with ma- 
chine-guns. They have fought in small parties, gaining 
isolated points in the southern part of the village, and hold- 
ing on to them under heavy fire until only a few men re- 
mained alive, still holding on. 

There have been fights to the death between a handful 
of English or Irish soldiers and a dozen or more Germans, 
meeting each other in the darkness of deep cellars quarried 
out from the chalk subsoil, and German gunners peering 
out of slits in concrete emplacements below ground and, 



118 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

firing bursts of bullets down the roadway have found them- 
selves suddenly in the grasp of men covered with white clay 
rising out of holes in the earth, with no weapons but their 
picks. 

Ovillers is a place of abominable ruin. 

"Do you know Neuville St. Vaast?" asked an officer this 
morning, and when I nodded (because I had a near call 
there), he said, "Ovillers beats it hollow, for sheer annihila- 
tion." 

There is nothing left of it except dust. There is not a 
wall standing two feet high, or a bit of a wall. The guns 
have swept it flat. 

But underground there are still great cellars quarried out 
by inhabitants who have long fled, and in these the Germans 
are holding out against our attacks and our bombardments. 

Heavy shells have opened up some of them, and filled 
them with dead and wounded, but many still stand strong, 
and out of them come the enemy's machine-guns and bomb- 
ers to make counter-attacks against the ditches and debris 
from which our men are working forward. The ground is 
pitted with enormous shell holes, in which men lie buried. 
Ovillers is perhaps more ghastly than any ruined ground 
along the front. 



It was at 8 o'clock on the morning of July 7 that the 
south-eastern part of the village. was taken by assault. The 
North-Country men advanced from a line to the north of 
La Boiselle after a great bombardment, and went over 
open ground to the labyrinth of trenches which defend the 
village. These had been smashed into a tumult of earth 
and sandbags, but, as usual, some of the German machine 
gunners had been untouched in their dug-outs, and they 
came up to serve their machines as soon as our barrage 
lifted. 

Other Germans defended themselves with bombs. There 



THE FIGHT FOR OVILLERS 119 

was savage fighting between the broken traverses, in shell 
craters, and in ditches. Many of our men fell, but others 
came up and pushed further forward. One officer and a 
man or two ran straight towards a German machine-gun 
which was doing deadly work, and knocked it out with a 
well-aimed bomb. But higher up on this maze of broken 
trenches was a German redoubt, from which machine-gun 
fire came in streams. 

Some Irish soldiers tried to storm the place but suffered 
heavy casualties in front of the redoubt. It was decided to 
fall back a little, and reform the line for the night, and all 
through the night the men worked to build up barricades 
to cut ofl the enemy from the southern end of the village. 

That end was being "cleaned out" of Germans, who were 
routed out of cellars. Many of them were glad to surrender 
and grateful for the life they had expected to lose. 

"We took bags of 'em," said an officer in charge of this 
work. 

Next day the men worked their way forward above 
ground and below ground. Some crept out of a ditch and 
worked up to a bombing post made by others on the left 
of the village. 

Another body of troops made a sudden forward move- 
ment and, taking the enemy by surprise, marched round 
the left and took up a line right across the south-west end 
of Ovillers without loss. That was a great gain which 
enabled our men to link up from separate points. The fight- 
ing to-day has been a further process of fitting up this jig- 
saw puzzle of isolated groups who have been burrowing 
into the German stronghold. 



A great adventure, or what the officers call a fine "stunt," 
was carried out by some Lancashire men on the right of the 
village. They were told to send out a patrol overland in the 
direction of Pozieres. 



120 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

I think, to the young officers in charge, it must have 
seemed rather like a pleasant suggestion to go and discover 
the North Pole or the Magnetic North. However, the idea 
appealed to them; they would see some new country, and 
there was quite a chance of individual fighting, which is so 
much better than being killed in a ditch by shell-fire. 

With them went a young machine-gun officer, who is 
justly proud of having gone out with sixteen machine-guns 
and, as you shall hear, of coming back with twenty. 

I know that he is pleased with himself, as he ought to be, 
because he had a laughing light in his eyes when I gave 
him a lift in a car on the way back to a good dinner, and, 
having escaped without a scratch (and four extra guns) 
it Is no wonder that he thought this adventure "a topping 
bit of work." 

It was gallant work, and as far as the first day went, 
without loss. The little company of men struck north-east- 
wards up an old bit of communication trench, and part of 
the way in the open, in the twilight and the darkness that 
followed. They were going .steadily into German territory, 
to the high ground which slopes down from Pozieres. 

There were lots of Germans about — thousands of them 
not enormously far away — but they did not expect a visit 
like this, and were not watchful of this piece of ground. 

After working forward for something like a mile they 
came to a redoubt inhabited by German bombers. 

What happened then is not very clear to me, and was 
certainly not very clear to the Germans. But this place was 
passed successfully, and it was further on that my machine- 
gun friend (the fellow with the sparkle in his eyes) in- 
creased his number of guns. 

This part of his adventure is also somewhat confused, as 
most fighting is. He tells me that he "pinched" the guns. 
Also that he made "a bag of 'em." Anyhow, he captured 
them, and has brought them back, which is a very good 
proof that they were taken. 

So far all went well. The night was spent in consolidat- 



THE FIGHT FOR OVILLERS 121 

ing this extraordinary position right in the heart of German 
territory, and all next day our men stayed there. They had 
a wonderful view of the country below them, saw many 
things worth noting for future use, and sent bursts of 
machine-gun fire at the enemy's infantry moving down to 
attack our troops. 

But it was too good to last. The enemy became aware 
that they were being hit from a position where none of our 
troops could possibly be, according to the logic of things. 

They could hardly believe their eyes, I imagine, when they 
saw these illogical young gentlemen making themselves at 
home in this extremely advanced post. 

There must have been some frightful words used by Ger- 
man officers before they ordered an infantry attack to clear 
these Englishmen out. The infantry came down a trench 
from Po'zieres, but as they came they were met by a stream 
of machine-gun fire directed by the young officer who had 
"pinched" four more guns than he had taken out. 

They suffered heavy casualties, and the attack broke 
down. But then the enemy put his guns to work, as he 
always does when his infantry fails, and what had been a 
great adventure, with a sporting chance, became a deadly 
business, with all the odds against our men. 

The enemy's shell-fire was concentrated heavily upon this 
one bit of trench away out in the open, and the ground was 
ploughed up with high explosives. The machine-guns were 
taken back, but the British held on until at last only an 
officer and six men were left. 

Those who came back unwounded numbered in the end 
only one officer and one man — with the exception of a 
sergeant who stayed behind with a wounded Irishman. He 
would not leave his comrade, and for thirty-six hours stayed 
out in his exposed position, with heavy shells falling on 
every side of him. 

The Irishman was delirious, and making such a noise 
that his friend knocked him on the head to keep him quiet. 



122 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

Every time a shell burst near him he shouted out, "You've 
missed me again, Fritz." 

But the sergeant himself kept his wits. He is a Lanca- 
shire man and with all the dogged pluck of Lancashire. 

When the bombardment quieted down he brought back 
his friend, and then went out to No Man's Land to search 
for another one. 



But let us not forget that our men have not the monopoly 
of courage in this war. We have against us a brave enemy, 
and again and again during this battle our ofiEicers and men 
have paid a tribute to the stubborn fighting qualities of the 
German soldiers. 

"For goodness sake," said one officer, "get rid of that 
strange idea in the minds of many people at home that we 
are fighting old men and boys and cripples. 

"All the Germans we have met and captured have been 
big, hefty fellows, well fed until our bombardment stopped 
their food and with plenty of pluck in them. 

"The courage of their machine-gunners especially, is — 
worse luck for us^ — quite splendid." 

As far as food goes the watchword of the German people 
is "soldiers first." 

That they are suffering themselves seems certain from 
the letters found in great numbers in their captured dug-out. 
It seems to me incredible that these should be fictitious. 

They bear in every line the imprint of bitter truth, and 
they read like a cry from starving people. 

"You reproach me with writing so little to you. What 
can I write? If I told the truth about conditions here I 
should be locked up, and as I do not wish to write lies to 
you I had better say nothing. 

"We have tickets for everything now — flour, meat, 
sausage, butter, fat, potatoes, sugar, soup, &c. We are 
really nothing more than tickets ourselves." 



THE FIGHT FOR OVILLERS US 

And in another letter from Cologne : — 

"Hunger is making itself felt here. During the week 
none of the families received any potatoes. The allowance 
now is one egg per head per week and half a pound of 
bread and fifty grammes of butter per head per day. 

"England is not so wrong about starving us out. If the 
war lasts three months longer we shall be done. It Is a 
terrible time for Germany. God is punishing us too 
severely." 

There is only one satisfaction in these pitiful letters. It 
is the hope it gives us that the enemy — not these poor 
women and children, but the Devil at the back of the busi- 
ness — will realise soon that war does not pay, and will haul 
down the flag with its skull and crossbones. 



XIII 
THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOJ^D LINE 



I 

July 15 
For a little while — yes, and even now — it has seemed some- 
thing rather marvellous. We have broken through the 
enemy's second line ; through, and beyond on a front of two 
and a half miles, and for the first time since October of 
1914 cavalry has been in action. Men who fought in the 
retreat from Mons, the little remnant left, look back on the 
old days when the enemy's avalanche of men swept down 
on them, and say, as one said to me yesterday, "Through 
the second line? Then we have broken the evil spell." So 
it seems to men who fought in the first battle of Ypres, or 
in the second, and then for a year more stood in their 
trenches staring through loopholes at the zigzag of German 
lines, barbwired, deeply dug, fortified with redoubts, ma- 
chine-gun emplacements and strong places — a great system 
of earthworks on high ground, nearly always on high 
ground, which made one grow cold to see in aeroplane 
photographs — supported by masses of guns which had been 
registered on every road and trench of ours. 

To smash through that could be done at a great cost. 
Given a certain number of guns on a certain length of front, 
with hardened troops ready for a big dash, and there was 
no doubt that we could break the enemy's first line, or 
system, as we broke through at Neuve Chapelle and at 
Loos. But afterwards ? That was the hard thing to solve. 
No one on the Western front had found the formula to 
carry the offensive beyond the first line without coming to 

124 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 125 

a dead check at a river of blood. The French troops who 
broke through in the Champagne fell before they reached 
the second line. At Loos Highlanders and Londoners 
swept through the first line and then, at Hill 70 and HuUuch, 
were faced by annihilating fire, and could go no further 
except to death. . . . But to-day we broke the second 
German line. 



I had the luck to give the news to some of our men who 
had been wounded early in the battle. It was worth a 
king's ransom to see their gladness. "Have we got through, 
sir?" asked an English boy, bandaged about the head and 
face. When I told him a great light came into his eyes, and 
he said "By Jove! . , . That's pretty good!" 

A wounded officer raised himself on a stretcher and called 
out to me as I passed, "Any news ? . . . How are we doing 
up there? . . . What, right through? . . . Oh, splendid!" 
Because I had come down from the battlefield, and might 
know something, officers and men on the roads asked eager 
questions. A doctor came out of an operating theatre in 
a field hospital. He was very busy there with men who 
could not answer questions. He stood for a moment in the 
doorway of the tent wiping his hands on a towel. 

"How's it going? Have we broken through?" 

He stared at me when I answered, as though searching 
for the truth in me, and said, "Sure? . . . I hardly thought 
we could do it." 

The news spread quickly behind the lines, and there has 
been a queer thrill in the air to-day, exciting men with the 
promise of victory. I think they, too, feel that an evil spell 
has been broken because British soldiers have broken the 
second German line. Their hopes run ahead of the facts. 

Their imagination has visions of an immediate German 
rout, and the enormous patience of the French people, in- 
credulous, after two years, of any quick ending, is not 



126 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

shared by some of our young officers and men, who believe 
that we have the enemy on the run, not remembering his 
third line, and fourth, and God knows how many more. 

For a day, anyhow, victory has been in the air, and be- 
cause it was the 14th of July, France's day, there are flags 
waving everywhere, on wayside cottages and barns and 
across the streets of an old French town. Women and 
children are carrying the tricolour, and as our wounded 
come down in ambulances and lorries, mostly lightly- 
wounded men straight out of the battle, wearing German 
helmets on bandaged heads, waving bandaged hands, or 
staring out gravely, with a pain in their eyes, at the life of 
the roads which is theirs again, the flags flutter up to them 
and laughing girls cry "Merci, camarades!" and old men 
stand on the roadsides raising their hats to these boys of 
ours who have won back a mile or two more of the soil of 
France, and have been touched by fire. 

All this is part of the emotion which belongs to war, the 
sentiment and the faith and the hope without which men 
could not fight nor women hide their tears. 

But the business of war itself is different and of a grim- 
mer kind, not admitting sentiment to those Generals of ours 
who have been calculating chances based upon the position 
of their guns, the quantity of their ammunition, their re- 
serves of men, the enemy's dispositions, resources and dif- 
ficulties, and all the mechanics of a great battle. They have 
had to study human nature, too, as well as the mechanism 
of war. To how great a test could they put these battalions 
of ours, in the plan to smash the German second line? How 
long, for instance, could they "stick it" in Bernafay Wood 
and the Trones Wood? Was it possible to put in troops 
already tired by hard fighting? How could they be replaced 
by fresh troops? ... a thousand problems of man-power 
and gun-power which must be reckoned out, without much 
margin of error, if all the cost of the first part of the battle 
— a tragic cost — were to be justified by success in the second 
part. 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 12T 

Working night and day, snatching a little sleep and a little 
food at odd hours, in constant touch with telephones whis- 
pering messages from headquarters, batteries, battalion 
commanders in the field, receiving reports of local successes 
and local failures of German counter-attacks, of German 
reinforcements in guns and men, our divisional Generals 
and Brigadiers, keeping in touch with Corps Generals and 
Army Generals, had to prepare for the second big blow. It 
would have to be quick and hard. 



There had been a whole fortnight's fighting since the 
great attack was launched on the First of July, and it had 
been very desperate fighting. On the left from Hebuterne 
down to Beaumont-Hamel the heroic self-sacrifice of great 
numbers of men had not been rewarded by success. That 
side of the German fortress lines had remained standing — 
broken in places, but not carried nor held after the first 
bloody assaults. 

The enemy had concentrated his defensive strength at 
that part of the line, believing the main attack was to be 
delivered there, and it was one vast redoubt crammed with 
machine-guns which scythed down battalions of our men 
as they advanced with incomparable valour. Further south 
the stronghold of Ovillers was not yet taken, though almost 
surrounded, and penetrated by bodies of grenadiers bombing 
their way into the quarries and cellars. 

It was through the southern bastion of the German fort- 
ress-position that our troops had stormed their way, and In 
fourteen days of hard stubborn fighting they had struggled 
forward up the high ground from the Fricourt ridge to the 
Montauban ridge. In my despatches I have endeavoured to 
record the narrative of these daily battles, and to give some 
faint Idea of the wonderful courage and tenacity of our 
men, who captured Contalmaison and lost it and captured 



128 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

it again under terrible storms of fire, who went forward 
to the Battle of the Woods, fighting for every yard of the 
way in Bailiff Wood on the left, and Trones Wood on the 
right, and Mametz Wood in the centre, with little copses of 
naked tree-trunks round about, into which the enemy hurled 
his high explosives. 

Wave after wave of splendid men went up. Not one of 
these places was won easily. The spirit of our race, all the 
steel in it, all the fire in its blood, was needed to gain the 
ground swept by machine-guns and ploughed by shells. 
There were hours when men of weaker stock would have 
despaired and yielded. But these men of ours would not be 
beaten. Fresh waves of them went to get back in the 
morning what had been lost at night, or at night what had 
been lost by day because of the fire which had destroyed 
those who had gone up first. And every day they made a 
little progress, thrusting forward an advance post here, 
winning a new bit of wood there, bombing the Germans back 
from ground we needed for a new advance. 

There was not a man among all our men who had any 
misunderstanding as to the purpose of the* struggle. I have 
spoken to hundreds of them, and all knew that it was "up 
to them," as they say, to push on to the second German line 
so that other men could break it. I know that many of these 
men, quite simple fellows, felt individually that upon his 
single courage, his last bit of pushful strength, his last 
stumble over a yard of earth towards that second German 
line, depended, as far as one man's strength tells, the suc- 
cess of the great attack. It was this spirit which made them 
shout "No surrender !" when surrender would have been an 
easy way of escape, and "stick it" in places of infernal hor- 
ror. I write the plain unvarnished truth. 

It was when Contalmaison — the Stronghold of the Woods 
— was finally and securely taken, when Mametz Wood and 
Bailiff Wood were mostly ours, and when our positions were 
strengthened at Montauban with some footing in Trones 
Wood, that the attack upon the second German line became 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 129 

possible. It was for that moment that our generals were 
now waiting and preparing. Men were there who had 
fought long in the Ypres salient, hardened to every phase 
of trench warfare, and men who had won great honour in 
the Loos salient, and men, all of them, who had the spirit of 
attack. 

I watched them passing along the roads towards the 
front, saw old friends in their ranks, and knew, as I looked, 
that in all the world there are not more splendid soldiers. 
Hardened by a long'campaign, bronzed to the colour of their 
belts, marching with most perfect discipline, these hand- 
some, clean-cut men went into the battlefield whistling as on 
the first day of the battle their comrades had gone singing, 
though they knew that in a few hours it would be hell for 
them. As I watched them pass something broke in my 
heart so that I could have wept silly tears. There were 
other men, harder than I, who were stirred by the same 
emotion, and cursed the war. 



4 

The attack was to begin before the dawn. Behind the 
lines, as I went up to the front in the darkness, the little 
villages of France were asleep. It was a night of beauty, 
very warm and calm, with a moon giving a milky light to 
the world. Clouds trailed across it without obscuring its 
brightness, and there was only one star visible — a watchful 
eye up there looking down upon the battlefields. 

The whitewashed walls of cottages and barns appeared 
out of great gulfs of shadow, and trees on high ground 
above the fields were cut black against the moonlight. Warm 
scents of hay and moist earth, and new-baked bread, and the 
acrid smell of French farmyards came upon the air. Fur- 
ther forward there was still great quietude along the roads, 
but here and there long supply columns and ambulance con- 
voys loomed black under the trees. 



130 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

The ambulances were empty before the battle. For sev- 
eral miles only one figure stood at every cross-road. It was 
the figure of Christ on a wayside Calvary. Sentries gave 
their challenge, as on the first night of battle, and pres- 
ently I saw other soldiers about in the dark entries of French 
courtyards, their bayonets shining like a streak of light, and 
officers standing together with whispered consultations, and, 
along side roads men marching. 

A long column of them came to a halt to let our car pass, 
and I looked into the men's eyes. There was a young officer 
there whose face I should know if I saw him again in the 
world, because it was in the rays of a lantern, and had a 
white light on it. He had the look of Lancelot. 

The men were very quiet. Very quiet also were camps of 
men and horses in fields dipping down to hollows where a 
few lanterns twinkled, and presently quite close to the edge 
of the battlefields I passed great columns of horse-gunners 
and horse transport and cavalry with their lances up, and 
Indian native cavalry, still as statues. The men were drawn 
up along the side of the road, and their figures were utterly 
black in the darkness between an old millhouse and some 
other buildings. Except for one man who was humming a 
tune, they were quite silent, and they hardly stirred in their 
saddles. They seemed to be waiting, with some grim 
expectation. 

The road was lined with trees which made a tunnel with 
its foliage, and at one end of the tunnel which showed a 
patch of sky, there were strange lights flashing, like flaming 
swords cutting through the darkness. We went up towards 
the lights and towards a monstrous tumult of noise, and 
walked straight across country towards the centre of a circle 
of fire which was all around us. Our artillery was smash- 
ing the German line. 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 131 



I described, perhaps at too great length, the bombardment 
on the night before the ist of July. Then it seemed to me 
that nothing could be more overwhelming to one's soul and 
senses. But this was worse — more wonderful and more 
terrible. As I stumbled over broken ground and shell holes, 
and got caught in coils of wire, a cold sweat broke out 
upon me, and for a little while I was horribly afraid. It 
was not fear for myself. It was just fear, the fear that an 
animal may have when the sky is full of lightning — a 
sensuous terror. The hell of war encircled us, and its waves 
of sound and light beat upon us. 

Our batteries were firing with an intense fury. The 
flashes of them were away back behind us — where the 
heavies have their hiding places — and over all the ground in 
front of our new line of attack. They came out of the black 
earth with short, sharp stabs of red flame whose light filled 
the hollows with pools of fire. And the sky and the ridges 
of ground and the earthworks and ruins and woods across 
our lines were blazing with the flashes of bursting shells. 
Blinding light leapt about like a will o' the wisp. For a 
second it lit up all the horizon over Contalmaison, and gave 
a sudden picture, ghastly white, of the broken chateau with 
stumps of trees about it. Then it was blotted out by a 
great blackness, and instantly shifted to Mametz Wood or 
to Montauban, revealing their shapes intensely and the 
shells crashing beyond them, until they, too, disappeared 
with the click of a black shutter. A moment later and 
Fricourt was filled with white brilliance, so that every bit of 
its ruin, its hideous rummage of earth, its old mine-craters, 
and its plague-stricken stumps of trees were etched upon 
one's eyes. Along the German second line by Bazentin-le- 
Grand, Bazentin-le-Petit, and Longueval, at the back of the 
woods, our shells were bursting without a second's pause 
and in great clusters. They tore open tht ground and let 



132 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

out gusts of flames. Flame fountains rose and spread from 
the German trenches above Pearl Wood. The dark night 
was rent with all these flames, and hundreds of batteries 
were feeding the fires. 

Every calibre of gun was at work. The heavy shells, 15- 
inch, 12-inch, 8-inch, 6-inch, 4.7, came overhead Hke flocks 
of birds — infernal birds with wings that beat the air into 
waves and came whining with a shrill high note, and 
stooped to earth with a monstrous roar. The lighter bat- 
teries, far forward, were beating the devil's tattoo, one-two- 
three-four, one-two-three- four, with sharp knocks that 
clouted one's ears. I sat on a wooden box on the top of 
an old dug-out in the midst of all this fury. There was a 
great gun to my left, and every time it fired it shook the 
box, and all the earth underneath, with a violent vibration. 

The moon disappeared soon after 3 o'clock, and no stars 
were to be seen. But presendy a faint ghost of dawn ap- 
peared. The white earth of the old, disused trenches about 
me became visible. A lark rose and sang overhead. And 
at 3.30 there was a sudden moment of hush. It was the 
lifting of the guns, and the time of attack. Over there in 
the darkness by Mametz Wood and Montauban thousands 
of men, the men I had seen going up, had risen to their feet, 
and were going forward to the second German line, or to 
the place where death was waiting for them, before the 
light came. 

The light came very quickly. It was strange what a 
difference a few minutes made. Very faintly, but steadily, 
the dawn crept through the darkness, revealing the forms 
of things and a little colour in the grass. The sandbags at 
my feet whitened. Over at Ovillers there were clouds of 
smoke, and from its denseness red and white rockets shot 
up and remained in the sky for several seconds. Other 
rockets, red and white and green, rose to the right of Con- 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 133 

talmaison towards Bazentin-le-Grand. Our infantry was 
advancing. 

A new sound came into the general din of gunfire. It was 
a kind of swishing noise, Hke that of flames in a strong 
wind. I knew what it meant. 

"Enemy machine-guns," said an artillery observer, who 
had just come out of his hole in the ground. There must 
have been many of them to make that noise. 

Our own artillery had burst out into a new uproar. I 
could see our shells bursting further forward, or thought I 
could. 

"I believe our men are getting on," said an officer, staring 
through his glasses. 

The gunner observer had one eye to a telescope. 

"There's too much mist about. And, anyhow, one can't 
make out the confusion of battle. It's always hopeless. 
And what the devil is that light?" 

"Must be a signal," said the gunner officer. "I think I'd 
better report it." 

He put his head into the dug-out, and spoke to a man 
sitting by a telephone. 

At 3.55 the light was clear enough for one to see German 
shrapnel, very black and thick, between Mametz Wood 
and Bazentin Wood. High explosives were bursting there 
too. The enemy had got his guns to work upon our 
infantry. 

At 4 o'clock there was a humming sound overhead, and 
I looked up and saw the first aeroplane flying towards the 
German lines, just as I had seen one on the first day of 
battle. It flew very low — no more than 5(X) ft. high — and 
went very steadily on towards the furnace, brave moth ! 

At 4.10 there was a red glow to the right of Montauban. 
It rose with a pulsing light and spread upwards — a great 
torch with sparks dancing over it. 

"By Jove!" said one of the men near me. "That's 
Longueval on fire !" 

In a little while there was no doubt about it. I could see 



134 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the sharp edge of broken buildings in the heart of the red 
glow. The village of Longueval was in flames. 

From behind the north-west corner of Mametz Wood a 
great rosy light rose like a cloud in the setting sun, but more 
glowing at its base. It died out three times and rose again, 
vividly, and then appeared no more. The gunner observer 
was bothered again. Was it a signal or an explosion? 
With so many lights and flames about it was difficult to tell. 

At about 4.30 I heard another furious outburst of ma- 
chine-gun fire in the direction of Longueval, and it seemed 
to spread westwards along Bazentin-le-Grand and Bazen- 
tin-le-Petit. I strained my eyes to see any of our in- 
fantry, but dense clouds of smoke were rolling over the 
ground past Contalmaison and between Mametz and Bazen- 
tin woods. It seemed as if we were putting up a smoke 
barrage there, and later a great volume of smoke hid the 
ground by Montauban. 

The enemy's artillery was now firing with great violence. 
Enormous shellbursts flung up the earth along the line of 
our advance, and the black shrapnel smoke was hanging 
heavily above. It seemed to me that some of their guns 
were firing wildly and blindly. High explosives burst down 
below Fricourt, where there was nothing to hurt, and in 
places far afield. The German gunners had got the wind 
up, as soldiers say, and now that darkness had gone and 
daylight come our men must have gone far ahead, if luck 
was theirs. Had they broken the second German line ? Men 
waiting for any news of them found the strain of ignorance 
intolerable. . . . What were they doing up there? 



The first men to come back from the battle were the 
wounded. They were the lightly wounded, or at least men 
who could walk. They came across the fields in twos and 
threes at first, or alone, single limping figures, at a slow 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 135 

pace. But after an hour or two they came in a straggling 
procession from the first-aid dressing stations up in the 
lines — men with bandaged heads, men with their arms in 
slings, men with wounded feet, so that they could only hop 
along with an arm round a comrade's neck. 

Some of them were all blood-stained, with blood on their 
faces and hands and clothes. Others had their uniforms 
torn to tatters, and there were men who were bare almost 
to the waist, with a jacket slung over one shoulder. There 
was hardly a man among them who wore his steel helmet, 
though some carried them slung to the rifle, and others wore 
German helmets and German caps. Ambulances were wait- 
ing for them, and the stretcher-bearers were busy with the 
bad cases. The stretcher-bearers had done their duty as 
gallantly as the fighting men, and some of their own com- 
rades were among the wounded. 

But they had been reinforced by men who do not belong 
to the R.A.M.C. Some of the stretchers were being carried 
by men in grey uniforms with flat round caps, who walked 
stolidly looking about them, at all those British soldiers, and 
at those fields on the British side, with curious eyes as 
though everything were strange to them. They were Ger- 
man prisoners paying for the privilege of life, and glad 
to pay. 

Later in the day there came down a long column of these 
men, not carrying stretchers, but marching shoulder to 
shoulder, under armed escort. There were over 700 of 
them in this one convoy, as a living proof that the day had 
gone well for British arms. They were tall, sturdy men for 
the most part, and in spite of their ordeal by fire most of 
them looked in good physical health, though haggard and 
hollow-eyed and a little dazed. There was a number of 
wounded among them who dragged wearily by the side of 
their luckier friends, but those who were badly hurt trav- 
elled with our own wounded, and I saw several of them 
on the lorries with their hands on the shoulders of men 
who had gone out to kill them. 



136 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

So the backwash of battle came down Hke a tide, but long 
before then I knew that we had broken the second German 
line and that our men were fighting on the high ground 
beyond. The village of Longueval was ours. Bazentin-le- 
Grand, both wood and village, and Bazentin-le-Petit, were 
ours. A gallant body of men had swept through Trones 
Wood, on the extreme right of the line, and patrols were 
pushing into Delville Wood and towards the highest ridge 
behind the broken German trenches. On the left our men 
had swept up and beyond Contalmaison Villa, which stands 
far north of the village. 

Every objective of the attack had been carried and our 
losses were not enormously heavy. The German lines had 
been captured on a front of nearly three miles — and the 
cavalry was going in. 

Scottish troops were amongst those who went first into 
Longueval — men belonging to famous old regiments — and 
they fought very grimly, according to the spirit of their 
race, with their blood set on fire by the music of the pipes 
that went with them. Before the light of dawn came, and 
when our guns lifted forward, they rose from the ground 
just north of Montauban and went forward across No 
Man's Land towards the German trenches. They had to 
make a distance of 1,200 yards over open ground and came 
at once under heavy shell-fire and an enfilade fire from 
machine-guns. 

The enemy also used smoke bombs, and the ground was 
ploughed with high explosives. A number of men fell, but 
the others went forward shouting and reached the German 
line. In some parts the wire had not been cut by our bom- 
bardment, but the Highlanders hurled themselves upon it 
and beat their way. Machine-guns were pattering bullets 
upon their ranks, but not for long. The men poured through 
and surged in waves into and across the German trenches. 
Every man among them was a grenadier, provided with 
bombs and with supplies coming up behind. It was with 
the bomb, the most deadly weapon of this murderous war 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 137 

for close combat, that the men fought their way through. 
The German soldiers defended themselves with their own 
hand grenades when their machine-guns had been knocked 
out in the first line trenches, but as they sprang out of their 
dug-outs when the bombardment lifted and our men were 
upon them they had but a poor chance of life unless they 
were quick to surrender. I hear that these trenches in the 
second German line were not deeply dug, and that the dug- 
outs themselves were hardly bomb-proof. 

For once in a way the enemy had been lazy and over- 
confident, and he paid now a bitter price for his pride in 
believing that the first line was impregnable. I do not care 
to write about this part of the fighting. It was bloody 
work, and would not be good to read. One incident was 
told me by a kilted sergeant as he lay wounded. From one 
of the dug-outs came a German officer. He had a wild 
light in his eyes, and carried a great axe. 

"I surrender," he said, in good English. 

And in broad Scotch the sergeant told him that if he had 
an idea of surrendering it would be a good and wise thing 
to drop his chopper first. But the German officer swung it 
high, and it came like a flash past the sergeant's head. Like 
a flash also a bayonet did its work. 



8 

While men were "cleaning up" the dug-outs in the first- 
line trenches other men pressed on and stormed their way 
into Longueval village. The great fires there which I had 
seen in the darkness had died down, and there was only the 
glow and smoulder of them in the ruins. But machine-guns 
were still chattering in their emplacements. 

In one broken building there were six of them firing- 
through holes in the walls. It was a strong redoubt sweep- 
ing the ground, which had once been a roadway and was 
now a shambles. Scottish soldiers rushed the place and 



138 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

flung bombs into it until there was no more swish of bullets 
but only the rising of smoke-clouds and black dust. Longue- 
val was a heap of charred bricks above ground, but there was 
still trouble below ground, before it was firmly taken. There 
were many cellars in which Germans fought like wolves at 
bay. And down in the darkness of these places men fought 
savagely, seeing only the glint of each other's eyes, and 
feeling for each other's throats, unless there were still 
bombs handy to make a quicker ending. It was primitive 
warfare. The cave-men fought like that, in such darkness, 
though not with bombs, which belong to our age in this 
Christian era of grace and civilisation. 

To the right of Longueval and south of the second Ger- 
man line lies the Trones Wood, and as it was on the right 
flank of our attack it could not be left in the enemy's hands. 
We had held most of it once, a few days ago, and for a few 
hours, but the enemy's shell-fire had made the place unten- 
able. It was into that fire that some of our English bat- 
talions advanced yesterday morning from Bernafay Wood. 
"They shelled us like hell," said a boy who came from a 
quiet place in Sussex before he knew what hell is like. 

There were machine-guns sweeping the southern end of 
the woods with cross-fire, and with bursting shells overhead 
it was a place of black horror in the night. But these Eng- 
lish boys kept crawling on to gain a yard or two before the 
next crash came, and then another yard or two, and at last 
they came up to the German line, and flung themselves sud- 
denly upon German machine-gunners and German riflemen 
sheltered behind earthworks and trunks of trees. . . . The 
wood was captured again, and then a queer kind of miracle 
happened, and it seemed as if those who had been dead had 
come to life again. For out of holes in the ground, and 
from behind the fallen timbers of shelled trees, came a num- 
ber of English boys, dirty and wild-looking, who shouted 
out, ''Hullo, lads!" and "What cheer, matey?" or just 
shouted and laughed with a sob in their throats and big 
tears down their grimy faces. They were West Kents, 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 139 

who had first taken the Trones Wood and then had been 
caught in a barrage of fire. With one officer 300 men had 
dug themselves into the roots of trees on the eastern edge 
of the wood and kept the Germans at bay with a machine- 
gun. 



Meanwhile a number of battalions, mostly English, but 
with some Scots — men who have done as well in this war 
since the early days of it as any troops who have fought 
in France — were attacking the line between Longueval and 
the two Bazentins. They, too, found the wire uncut in 
places, but they went through in a tearing hurry, hating the 
machine-gun fire and resolved to end it quickly. They 
stormed the German trenches and fought down them with 
bombs and bayonets, German soldiers came out of the dug- 
outs and begged for mercy. They came holding out their 
watches, their pocket-books, their helmets, anything that 
they thought would ransom their lives, and when they had 
been taken prisoners they made no trouble about carrying 
back the English wounded, but were glad to go. It was all 
in the darkness, except when shell-bursts lit the ground, and 
some of our battalions lost their sense of direction towards 
Bazentin Woods. Prisoners acted as guides to their own 
lines. Five or six of them unwillingly led the way back. 
A British officer of nineteen, a boy who had only been in 
France a month or two, led one of the companies forward 
because his brother officers had fallen. 

"Come on, lads!" he shouted, "I'm only a kid, but I'll 
show you the way all right." 

They liked those words, "only a kid," and laughed at 
them. 

"He's a plucked 'un, he is," said one of the men who fol- 
lowed him. They went after him into Bazentin Wood, 
and others followed on, into and through a heavy barrage 
of fire. 



140 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

So it was on the left, where other battalions were at 
work pressing forward in waves to Contalmaison Villa and' 
the ground beyond. The second German line had fallen 
before our men, and they were over it and away. 

10 

It was at about 6 o'clock in the evening that some British 
cavalry came into action. They were the men whom I had 
seen on my way up to the battlefield, a small detachment of 
the Dragoon Guards and also of the Deccan Horse. They 
worked forward with our infantry on a stretch of country 
between Bazentin Wood and Delville Wood, rising up to 
High Wood (Foureaux Wood), and then rode out alone 
in reconnaissance, in true cavalry formation, with the com- 
mander in the rear. Lord! Not one in a thousand would 
have believed it possible to see this again. When they 
passed, the infantry went a little mad, and cheered wildly 
and joyously, as though these men were riding on a road of 
triumph. 

So they rode on into open country, skirting Delville 
Wood. Presently a machine-gun opened fire upon them. 
It was in a cornfield, with German infantry, and the officer 
in command gave the word to his men to ride through the 
enemy. The Dragoons put their lances down and rode 
straight into the wheat. They killed several men and then 
turned and rode back, and charged again, among scattered 
groups of German infantry. Some of them prepared to 
withstand the charge with fixed bayonets. Others were 
panic-stricken and ran forward crying "Pity! Pity!" and 
clung to the saddles and stirrup leathers of the Dragoon 
Guards. Though on a small scale, it was a cavalry action 
of the old style, the first on the Western front since October 
of the first year of the war. 

With thirty-two prisoners our men rode on slowly still 
reconnoitring the open country on the skirt of Delville 
Wood, until they came again under machine-gun fire and 



THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE 141 

drew back. As they did so an aeroplane came overhead, 
skimming very low, at no more than 300ft. above ground. 
The cavalry turned in their saddles to stare at it for a mo- 
ment or two, believing that it was a hostile machine. But 
no bullets came their way, and in another moment it stooped 
over the German infantry concealed in the wheat and fired 
at them with a machine-gun. Four times it circled and 
stooped and fired, creating another panic among the enemy, 
and then it flew off, leaving the cavalry full of admiration 
for this daring feat. They could ride no further, owing 
to the nature of the ground, and that night they dug them- 
selves in. German guns searched in vain for them, and the 
cavalry to-night is full of pride, believing with amazing 
optimism that their day may come again. [It was after all 
only a "fancy stunt" as soldiers call it, and it seems certain 
now that the cavalry is an obsolete arm of war on the 
Western front. The Tanks have taken their place.] 

The scene all through the afternoon behind the battle- 
Hnes and down in little villages beyond the reach of guns 
will stay in my mind as historic pictures. Numbers of 
wounded men — with a very high proportion of lightly 
wounded among them — arrived at the casualty clearing sta- 
tions and, while they waited their turn for the doctors and 
nurses, lay about the grass, fingering their souvenirs — 
watches, shell-fuses, helmets, pocket-books, German letters, 
and all manner of trophies — and telling their adventures in 
that wild battle of the night. 

They seemed to have no sense of pain, and not one man 
groaned, in spite of broken arms and head wounds and 
bayonet thrusts. Every dialect of England and Scotland 
and Ireland could be heard among them. There were men 
from many battalions, and as they lay there talking or smok- 
ing or sleeping in the sunlight, other processions came down 
in straggling columns, limping and holding on to comrades, 
hobbling with sticks, peering through blood-stained rags, 
tired and worn and weak, but with a spirit in them that was 
marvellous. 



XIV 
THE WOODS OF DEATH 



I 

July 17 
We are again in the difficult hours that inevitably follow a 
successful advance, when ground gained at the extreme limit 
of our progress has to be defended against counter-attacks 
from close quarters, when men in exposed positions have 
to suffer the savaging of the enemy's artillery, and when 
our own gunners have to work cautiously because isolated 
patrols of men in khaki may be mistaken in bad light for 
grey-clad men in the same neighbourhood. This period is 
the test of good generalship and of good captains. 

The weather was rather against us to-day. There was a 
thick haze over the countryside, causing what naval men 
call "low visibility," and making artillery observation dif- 
ficult. It was curious to stand on high ground and see only 
the dim shadow-forms of places like Mametz Wood and 
the other woodlands to its right and left, where invisible 
shells were bursting. 

Our shells were passing overhead, and I listened to their 
high whistling, but could see nothing of their bursts, and 
for nearly an hour an intense bombardment made a great 
thunder in the air behind the thick veil of mist. 

We were shelling High Wood, from which our men have 
had to retire for a time owing to the enemy's heavy barrage 
of high explosives, and we were also pounding the enemy's 
lines to the north of Bazentin-le-Grand and Longueval, 
where he is very close to our men. Hostile batteries were 

142 



THE WOODS OF DEATH 143 

retaliating upon the woodlands which we have gained and 
held during the past three days. 



This woodland fighting has been as bad as anything in this 
war — most frightful and bloody. Dead bodies lie strewn 
beneath the trees, and in the shell-holes are wounded men 
who have crawled there to die. There is hardly any cover 
in which men may get shelter from shell-fire. 

The Germans had dug shallow trenches, but they were 
churned up by our heavies, and it is difficult to dig in again 
because of the roots of great trees, and the fallen timber, 
and the masses of twigs and foliage which have been 
brought down by British and German guns. When our 
troops went into Trones Wood under most damnable fire of 
5.9's they grubbed about for some kind of cover without 
much success. 

But some of them had the luck to strike upon three Ger- 
man dug-outs which were exceptionally deep and good. 
Obviously they had been built some time ago for officers 
who, before we threatened their second line, may have 
thought Trones Wood a fine dwelling-place, and not too dan- 
gerous if they went underground. They went down forty 
feet, and panelled their rooms, and brought a piano down 
for musical evenings. 

A young company commander found the piano and 
struck some chords upon it at a time when there was louder 
music overhead — the scream of great shells and the inces- 
sant crash of high explosives in the wood. Further on, 
at the edge of the wood, our men found a machine-gun em- 
placement built solidly of cement and proof against all shell 
splinters, and it was from this place that so many of our 
men were shot down before the enemy's gunners could be 
bombed out. 



144! THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



One of the most extraordinary experiences of this wood- 
land fighting was that of an English boy who now lies in a 
field-hospital smiling with very bright and sparkling eyes 
because the world seems to him like Paradise after an in- 
fernal dwelling-place. He went with the first rush of men 
into Mametz Wood, but was left behind in a dug-out when 
they retired before a violent counter-attack. 

Some German soldiers passed this hole where the boy lay 
crouched, and flung a bomb down on the off-chance that an 
English soldier might be there. It burst on the lower steps 
and wounded the lonely boy in the dark corner. 

He lay there a day listening to the crash of shells through 
the trees overhead — ^English shell-fire — not daring to come 
out. Then in the night he heard the voices of his own coun- 
trymen, and he shouted loudly. 

But as the English soldiers passed they threw a bomb into 
the dug-out, and the boy was wounded again. He lay there 
another day, and the gun-fire began all over again, and 
lasted until the Germans came back. Another German sol- 
dier saw the old hole and threw a bomb down, as a safe 
thing to do, and the boy received his third wound. 

He lay in the darkness one more day, not expecting to 
live, but still alive, still eager to live and to see the light 
again. If only the English would come again and rescue 
him! 

He prayed for them to come. And when they came, cap- 
turing the wood completely and finally, one of them, seeing 
the entrance to the dug-out and thinking Germans might be 
hiding there, threw a bomb down — and the boy was 
wounded for the fourth time. This time his cries were 
heard, and the monotonous repetition of this ill-luck ended, 
and the victim of it lies in a white bed with wonderful shin- 
ing eyes. 



THE WOODS OF DEATH 145 



The German prisoners have stories like this to tell, for 
they suffered worst of all under the fury of our bombard- 
ment and the coming and going of our troops in the wood- 
land fighting. I spoke with one of them to-day — one of a 
new batch of men, whose number I reckoned as 300, just 
brought down from Bazentin-le-Grand. 

He was a linguist, having been an accountant in the North 
German Lloyd, and gave me a choice of conversation in 
French, Italian, Greek or English. I chose my own tongue, 
but let him do the talking, and standing there in a barbed 
wire entanglement, surrounded by hundreds of young Ger- 
mans, unshaven, dusty, haggard and war-worn, but still 
strong and sturdy men, he described vividly the horrors of 
the woods up by the two Bazentins where he and these com- 
rades of his had lain under our last bombardment. 

They had but little cover except what they could scrape 
out beneath the roots of trees. And the trees crashed upon 
them, smashing the limbs of men, and shells burst and 
buried men in deep pits, and the wounded lay groaning under 
great branches which pinned them to the ground or in the 
open where other shells were bursting. From what I can 
make out some of the men here retreated across the coun- 
try between Bazentin and Delville Woods, for they were 
the men who were captured by our cavalry. 

"My comrades were afraid," said this German sergeant. 
"They cried out to me that the Indians would kill their pris- 
oners, and that we should die if we surrendered. But I 
said, 'That is not true, comrades. It is only a tale. Let us 
go forward very quietly with our hands up.' So in that way 
we went, and the Indian horsemen closed about us, and I 
spoke to one of them, asking for mercy for our men, and 
he was very kind, and a gentleman, and we surrendered to 
him safely." 

He was glad to be alive, this man who came from Wies- 



146 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

baden. He showed me the portrait of his wife and boy, and 
cried a little, saying that the German people did not make 
the war, but had to fight for their country when told to fight, 
like other men. All his people had believed, he said, that the 
war would be over in August or September. 

"Are they hungry?" I asked. 

"They have enough to eat," he said, "They are not starv- 
ing." 

He waved his hand back to the woodlands, and remem- 
bered the terror of the place from which he had just come. 

"Over there it was worse than death." 



Over there on the one small village of Bazentin-le-Grand 
our heavy howitzers flung an amazing quantity of shells on 
Friday morning. The place was swept almost flat, and 
little was left of its church and houses but reddish heaps 
of bricks and dust, and twisted iron, and the litter of 
destruction. Yet there were many Germans living here 
when the men of some famous regiments came through in 
the dawn with bayonets and bombs, Yorkshiremen and some 
of the Scottish all mixed together, as happens at such times. 
There was one great cellar underneath Bazentin-le-Grand 
large enough to hold 1500 men, and here, crouching in its 
archways and dark passages, were numbers of German 
soldiers. 

They came to meet our men and surrendered to them. 
And here also lay many wounded, in their blood, and un- 
bandaged — just as they had crawled down from the ground 
above where our shells were smashing everything. 

If any man were to draw the picture of those things or 
to tell them more nakedly than I have told them, because 
now is not the time, nor this the place, no man or woman 
would dare to speak again of war's "glory," or of "the 
splendour of war," or any of those old lying phrases which 
hide the dreadful truth. 



XV 

PRISONERS OF WAR] 



I 

July 17 

In spite of bad weather, which has hampered operations so 
that no great advance has been possible, we have made some 
progress to-day in the direction of Pozieres. 

Some of our troops stormed a double line of trenches 
from Bazentin-le-Petit to the south-east of Pozieres, a dis- 
tance of 1 500 yards, strewn from one end to the other with 
German dead and wounded. 

High Wood, or the Bois de Foureaux, as it is properly 
called, is to a great extent No Man's Land, as lying over 
the crest of the hill our men could be shelled by the direct 
observation of the enemy's artillery, over the heads of their 
own men in the lower edge of the wood. 

Our line therefore has been drawn back from this salient 
and straightened out from Longueval to the long trench by 
Pozieres, which is now approached on both sides. 

Ovillers is ours, after a German post which had been 
bravely defended surrendered with two officers and about 
140 men early this morning. There is no other news of Im- 
portance to-day on the line of attack, but it is good enough, 
and the general position of our force is improved. 



What is the German point of view about our attack and 
the prospects of the war? 

147 



148 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

That is the question I have always had in my head during 
the last fortnight, when I have seen batches of prisoners 
being led down from the battlefields, and the question I 
have put to some of them in bad German or fair English. 

It is difficult to get any clear answer, or an answer of any 
real value. The men have just come out of dreadful places, 
many of them are still dazed under the shock of shell-fire, 
some of them are proud and sullen, others are ready to talk 
but ignorant of the battle-front in which they have been and 
of the situation outside the dug-outs in which they crouched. 

Yet there is something to be learnt out of their very 
ignorance, and by putting together answers from separate 
groups of men and individual soldiers one does get a kind of 
hint of the general idea prevailing among these German 
troops against us. 

Quite a number of them have told me that they and cheir 
people were sure that the war would be over in August or 
September. They have been promised that but could not 
give any reason for belief except the promise. 

"Do you think you are winning?" I asked one man — of 
real intelligence. 

"We thought so," he answered. 

"And now?" 

He raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders. 

"The English are stronger than we believed." 

There seems to me no doubt that they were perfectly con- 
fident in the strength of their lines. They did not believe 
that such defences as those at Fricourt and Montauban 
could ever be broken. 

The new power of our artillery has amazed them — they 
speak of it always with terror — and the officers especially 
admit that they did not imagine that "amateur gunners," as 
they call our men, could achieve such results. 

For the courage of our infantry they have always had a 
great respect, remembering the two battles of Ypres, but 
they count the strength of armies by the strength of guns, 
and until recent days knew they had the greater power. 



PRISONERS OF WAR 149 

The foundations of their belief are shaken, but only to 
the extent that they admit the possibility of their army 
having to retire to a new line of defence. 

I have not found one man speak of defeat. They are 
still convinced that the German army will never be beaten 
to the point of surrender. As the German doctor whom I 
have previously quoted said to me a few days ago, "You 
are strong and we are strong. Neither side can crush the 
other. If the war goes on it will be the suicide of Europe." 

These German soldiers do not want it to go on. That idea 
in their heads is clear enough. They are weary of war, 
and have a great craving for peace. They want to see their 
wives and children again. One strain of thought creeps out 
in their talk. It is the suggestion that they fight not as free 
men desiring to fight, but as men compelled to fight by higher 
powers, against whom they cannot rebel. 

"It is our discipline," said one of them to-day. "We can- 
not help ourselves." 

I am told by one of the officers in charge of them that 
they talk of another inevitable war between Germany and 
England in ten years from now. 

They have been taught to believe, he says, that we thrust 
this war upon them, that all through we have been the ag- 
gressors, and that Germany will seek her revenge. 



Personally, I have not heard such words spoken, but 
rather from several of these prisoners, a frank hatred of 
war as the cause of horrors and suffering beyond the 
strength of man to bear. They talk as men under an evil 
spell put upon them by unknown powers beyond their 
reach. 

As I have said, all this does not amount to anything of 
real value in trying to see into the spirit of the German peo- 
ple. They are the opinions of prisoners, who have escaped 



150 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

from the worst terrors of war, but are immediately cautious 
of any interrogation, and perhaps a little tempted to say 
pleasing things to their captors. They cannot conceal their 
ignorance, which is enormous, because all but victories have 
been hidden from them until their own defeat, but they 
conceal their knowledge. 

I was interested, for instance, to hear them deny any 
great suffering from hunger in their own country. 

"Our people have enough to eat," said several of them 
when I questioned them. When I told them of the letters 
captured in their dug-outs, all full of pitiful tales about lack 
of food, they stared at me with grave eyes, and said again, 
stoutly : 

"They have enough to eat. Bread enough, and meat 
enough." 

Their first desire upon coming from the battlefields is 
water, which they get at once, and their next is permission 
to write home to their people. All of them are anxious 
to be sent at once to England, where they expect greater 
comforts than in the fields with barbed- wire hedges, where 
they are kept on the way down until they can be en- 
trained. 

As I watched them to-day again I thought of our men 
who are prisoners, and of all the great sum of human 
misery which has been heaped up in this war. Fortunately, 
in our treatment of prisoners we teach our enemies a lesson 
in chivalry, for it is not, I think, in our race or history, 
with rare exceptions, to kick men when they are down. 



XVI 
THE LAST STAND IN OVILLERS 



I 

July i8 
In all the fighting during the past fortnight the struggle 
for Ovillers stands out separately as a siege in which both 
attack and defence were of a most dogged and desperate 
kind. 

The surrender of the remnants of its garrison last night 
ends an episode which will not be forgotten in history. 
These men were of the 3rd Prussian Guard, and our Com- 
mander-in-Chief, in his day's despatch, has paid a tribute 
to their bravery which is echoed by officers and men who 
fought against them. It is a tribute to our own troops 
also, who by no less courage broke down a stubborn resist- 
ance and captured the garrison. 

I have already described the earlier phases of the siege; 
the first attack on July i, when our men broke through the 
outer network of trenches and advanced through sheets of 
machine-gun fire, suffering heavy casualties, the seizure of 
separated bits of broken trench-work by little bodies of 
gallant men fighting, independently, gaining ground by a 
yard or two at a time and attacking machine-gun posts and 
bombing posts by hand-to-hand fights; the underground 
struggle in great vaulted cellars beneath the ruined town; 
the surprise attack at night when a number of fresh troops 
sprang upon the defences to the western side of the town, 
and then, linking up with the men in the captured trenches 
and ruins, cut the place in half, took many prisoners, and 

151 



15g THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

isolated the enemy still holding out in the northern half of 
the position. 

Many different battalions had taken a share in the fight- 
ing, all had suffered, and then given way to new men who 
knew the nature of this business, but set grimly to work to 
carry on the slow process of digging out the enemy from 
his last strongholds. It was almost literally a work of 
digging out. 



The town of Ovillers does not exist. It was annihilated 
by the bombardments and made a rubbish heap of bricks 
and dust. When our men were separated from the enemy 
by only a yard or two or by only a barricade or two the ar- 
tillery on both sides ceased fire upon Ovillers, lest the gun- 
ners should kill their own men. 

They barraged intensely round about. Our shells fell 
incessantly upon the enemy's communication trenches to 
the north and east so that the beleaguered garrison should 
not get supplies or reinforcements. 

We made a wall of death about them. But though no 
shells now burst over the ground where many dead lay 
strewn, there was artillery of a lighter kind, not less deadly. 
It was the artillery of machine-guns and bombs. The 
Prussian Guard made full use of the vaulted cellars and 
of the ruined houses. 

They had made a series of small keeps, which they 
defended almost entirely by machine-gun fire. As soon 
as we advanced the machine-guns were set to work, and 
played their hose of bullets across the ground which our 
men had to cover. One by one, by getting round about 
them, by working zig-zag ways through cellars and ruins, 
by sudden rushes of bombing parties, led by young officers 
of daring spirit, we knocked out these machine-gun em- 
placements and the gunners who served them, until, yester- 



THE LAST STAND IN OVILLERS 153 

day, there was only the last remnant of the garrison left in 
Ovillers. 

These men of the 3rd Prussian Guard had long been in 
a hopeless position. They were starving because all sup- 
plies had been cut off by our never-ceasing barrage, and 
they had no water supply, so that they suffered all the tor- 
ture of great thirst. 

Human nature could make no longer resistance, and, at 
last, the officers raised a signal of surrender, and came over 
with nearly 140 men, who held their hands up. 

The fighting had been savage. At close grips in the 
broken earthworks and deep cellars there had been no 
sentiment, but British soldiers and Germans had flung 
themselves upon each other with bombs and any kind of 
weapon. 

But now, when all was ended, the last of the German 
garrison were received with the honours of war, and none 
of our soldiers denies them the respect due to great courage. 

"They stuck it splendidly," was the verdict of one of 
them to-day, and though there is no love lost between our 
army and the enemy's, it is good at least that we should 
have none of that silly contempt for the foe which is some- 
times expressed by people — never by British soldiers — who 
unconsciously discredit the valour of our men by under- 
estimating the courage and tenacity of those who fight us. 



XVII 
THE SCOTS AT LONGUEVAL 



I 

July 2d 
The present stage of our advance is causing us very hard 
fighting for important positions on high ground which 
must be gained and held before new progress over open 
country is possible. The enemy is gathering up his re- 
serves and flinging them against us to check the onward 
movement at all costs, and it seems to me that he has 
brought up new batteries of heavy guns, because his ar- 
tillery fire is increasing. 

His prisoners reveal the grave anxiety that reigns behind 
the German lines, where there is no attempt to minimise the 
greatness of our menace. The enemy is undoubtedly strain- 
ing every nerve to organise a new and formidable resist- 
ance. 

To-day, however, he has lost many men and valuable 
ground, not only in fighting with British troops, but with the 
French, who at Maurepas and other positions on our right 
have made a successful advance. 

In the early hours of this morning, after a long bombard- 
ment which made the night very dreadful with noise, and 
the sky vivid with the light of bursting shells — such a night 
as I described at length a day or two ago — an attack was 
made by our troops on the high ground between Delville 
Wood and High Wood and to the west of these positions. 

The enemy was in great strength, and maintained a 
strong defence, but he suffered severely, and was forced to. 
retreat in disorder upon some parts of his line. 

154 



THE SCOTS AT LONGUEVAL 155 



A good deal of the fighting fell to south-country boys 
•who once followed the plough and still have the English 
sky in their eyes. But not far from them were some of the 
"Harry Lauder lads," who used to man the battlements 
of Edinburgh Castle when Rouge Dragon knocked at the 
gate and asked admittance for the King. 

They had a bad night — "the worst a man could dream 
of," said one of them, who had known other bad nights of 
war. They lay under the cross-fire of great shells, British 
and German. Field batteries were pumping out shells in a 
great hurry before breakfast time, but these were as noth- 
ing compared with the work of the heavies. 

We were firing "Grandmothers" and "Aunties," those 
15-inch and 12-inch shells which go roaring through the 
air and explode with vast earth-shaking crashes. And the 
enemy was replying with his coal-scuttles. 

"They were the real Jack Johnsons," said a Devonshire 
lad who had a piece of one of them in his right shoulder. 
"These brutes have not been seen, I'm told, since Ypres, 
except in ones or twos. But they came over as thick and 
fast as hand-grenades. You know the kind of hole they 
make? 'Tis forty feet across and deep enough to bury a 
whole platoon." 

"The din fairly made me quake," said a tall lad with 
the straw-coloured hair one sees on market days in Ipswich, 
and he shivered a little at the remembrance of the night, 
though the sun was warm upon him then. 

But they did not suffer much from all this gun-fire as 
they manned their trenches in the darkness. The shells 
passed over them, and few were hurt. The attack was 
made before the dawn up the rising slope of ground towards 
high roads which used to go across from the Bois de Fou- 
reaux, or High Wood, as we call it, to Delville Wood. 

Now there are no roads, for our bombardment had torn 



156 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

up the earth into a series of deep craters. The Germans 
had a line of dug-outs here, built in great haste since the 
first of July, but well built. 

As soon as our men were upon them, the German soldiers, 
who had been hiding below ground, came up like rabbits 
when the ferrets are at work. Most of them ran away, as 
hard as they could, stumbling and falling over the broken 
ground. 

"They ran so hard," said one of our men, "that I couldn't 
catch up with 'em. It was a queer kind of race, us chasing 
'em, and they running. The only Germans I came up with 
were dead 'uns." 

But some of the Germans did not run. They came for- 
ward through the half -darkness of this dawn with their 
hands raised. One Cornish boy I knew took five prisoners, 
who crowded round him crying "Kamerad!" so that he 
felt like the old woman in the shoe. 

Up to that point our casualties were very slight, but later 
on, up the higher ground, the enemy's machine-gun fire 
swept across the grass and the brown, bare earth of the 
old trenches, and above the high rims of the shell craters. 
But our men swept on. 

Other troops were working round High Wood on the 
left, and in the centre men were advancing into the wood 
itself, and forcing forward over the fallen trees and 
branches and the bodies of German dead. The enemy's 
shells crashed above them, but these regiments of ours were 
determined to get on and to hold on, and during the day 
they have organised strong points, and captured the western 
side and all the southern part of this position. 



The situation at Longueval and Delville Wood, on the 
north-east of that village, has been very full of trouble 
for our men ever since these places were taken by some of 



THE SCOTS AT LONGUEVAL 157 

our Highland regiments on July 14. The enemy made re- 
peated counter-attacks from the upper end of the village, 
where he still held some machine-gun emplacements, and 
kept a way open through his trenches here on the north so 
that he could send up supports and supplies. 

From the north also he concentrated heavy artillery fire 
on the southern part of Delville Wood, which was held by 
some of our South African troops, and maintained a violent 
barrage. 

Nevertheless the Highlanders have held on for nearly a 
week with a dogged endurance that has frustrated all the 
efforts of the enemy to get back on to their old ground. 
The gallantry of these men who wear the tartans of the 
old Scottish clans would seem wonderful if it were not 
habitual with them. 

Their first dash for Longueval was one of the finest 
exploits of the war. They were led forward by their pipers, 
who went with them not only towards the German lines 
but across them and into the thick of the battle. 

It was to the tune of "The Campbells are Coming" that 
one regiment went forward and that music, which I heard 
last up the slopes of Stirling Castle, was heard with terror, 
beyond a doubt, by the German soldiers. Then the pipes 
screamed out the Charge, the most awful music to be heard 
by men who have the Highlanders against them, and with 
fixed bayonets and hand-grenades they stormed the Ger- 
man trenches. 

Here there are many concealed machine-gun emplace- 
ments, and dug-outs so strong that no shell could smash 
them. Some of them were great vaults and concreted 
chambers of great depth, where many Germans could find 
cover. But the Highlanders went down into them with 
great recklessness, two or three men flinging themselves 
into the vaults where enemies were packed. They were 
scornful of all such dangers. 

I am told by one of their colonels that in bombing down 
the communication trenches they threw all caution to the 



158 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

wind, and while some of the men went along the trenches 
others ran along on top under heavy fire, cheering their 
comrades on, and then leaping down upon the enemy. 

The Germans defended themselves with most stubborn 
courage, and even now, or at least as late as last night, they 
still serve some machine-guns at one point, from which it 
has been found difficult to dislodge them. They are down in 
a concrete emplacement, from which they can send out a 
continual spatter of bullets down the ruined way of what 
once was a street. 

The Highlanders dug trenches across the village, and 
had what they call in soldiers' language, "a hell of a time," 
which is a true way of putting it. The enemy barraged the 
village with progressive lines of heavy shells, yard by yard, 
but by the best of luck his lines stopped short of where 
some ranks of Highlanders were lying down in fours, 
using frightful words to keep their spirits up. There were 
hours of bad luck, too, and one was when some of the 
transport men and horses were knocked out by getting into 
a barrage. Casualties were heavy among other officers and 
men, but the Highlanders held on with a wonderful spirit. 



It is a spirit which I saluted to-day with reverence when I 
met these men marching out of the fire-zone. They came 
marching across broken fields, where old wire still lies 
tangled and old trenches cut up the ground, and the noise 
of the guns was about them. 

Some of our heavy batteries were firing with terrific 
shocks of sound, which made mule-teams plunge and trem- 
ble, and struck sharply across the thunder of masses of 
guns firing along the whole line of battle. There was a 
thick summer haze about, and on the ridges the black va- 
pours of shell-bursts, and all the air was heavy with smoke. 
It was out of this that the Highlanders came marching. 



THE SCOTS AT LONGUEVAL 159 

They brought their music with them, and the pipes of war 
were playing a Scottish love-song : 

I lo'e nae laddie but ane, 
An' he lo'es nae lassie but me. 

Their kilts were caked with mud and stained with blood 
and filth, but the men were beautiful, marching briskly, 
with a fine pride in their eyes. Officers and men of other 
regiments watched them pass and saluted them, as men 
who had fought with heroic courage, so that the dirtiest 
of them there and the humblest of these Jocks was a fine 
gentleman and worthy of knighthood. 

Many of them wore German helmets and grinned beneath 
them. One brawny young Scot had the cap of a German 
staff officer cocked over his ear. One machine-gun section 
brought down two German machines besides their own. 
They were very tired, but they held their heads up, and 
the pipers who had been with them blew out their bags 
bravely, though hard up for wind. 

And the Scottish love-song rang out across the fields. 
Whatever its words, it was, I think, a love-song for the 
dear dead they had left behind them. 



XVIII 
THE DEVIL'S WOOD 



I 

July 21 
Delville Wood, to the right of Longueval, is a name 
marked on the war-maps, but some of our soldiers, who 
take liberties with all French place-names, giving a familiar 
and homely sound to words beyond the trick of their 
tongues, call this "The Devil's Wood." 

It is a reasonable name for it. It is a devilish place, 
which has been a death-trap to both the German and 
British troops who have held it in turns, or parts of it. It 
is here, and in High Wood to the north-west of it, that the 
fighting continues hotly. Last night and to-day the north- 
ern end was under the fire of our guns, the southern end 
under German fire, and somewhere about the centre the 
opposing infantry is entrenched as far as it is possible to 
dig in such a place. 

The German soldiers have the advantage in defence. 
They have placed their machine-guns behind barricades of 
great tree-trunks, hidden their sharpshooters up in the 
foliage of trees still standing above all the litter of branches 
smashed down by shrapnel and high explosives, and send a 
patter of bullets across to our men, who have dug holes 
for themselves below the tough roots. 

There is no need for either side to do any wood-chop- 
ping for the building of their barricades. Great numbers 
of trees have fallen, cut clean in half by heavy shells, and 
lie across each other in the tangle of brushwood. Branches 
have been lopped off or torn off, and are piled up as 

160 



THE DEVIL'S WOOD 161 

though for a bonfire. The broken trunks stick up in a 
ghastly way, stripped of their bark, and enormous roots to 
which the earth still clings have been torn out of the ground 
as though by a hurricane, and stretch their tentacles out 
above deep pits. 

The wood is strewn with dead, and wounded men are so 
caught in the jungle of fallen branches that they can hardly 
crawl through it. Even the unwounded have to crawl on 
their way forward to fight, over, or underneath, the great 
trunks which lie across the tracks. 

The gallant South Africans who were here could not dig 
quickly enough to get cover from the shells which the 
enemy's guns pumped into the wood as soon as our men 
had gained it, and found it very hard to dig at all, but now, 
I hope, our troops are more secure from shell-fire and the 
enemy is suffering severely from our bombardment. His 
machine-guns chatter through the day and night from one 
or two strong emplacements, and our men, lying behind 
their own stockades, effectively reply. In the twilight of 
"The Devil's Wood" the struggle goes on, but gradually we 
are enclosing the place and the Germans in it are not there 
for long. 

2 

July 27 
At about ten o'clock this morning our troops again took 
Delville Wood — all but a narrow strip on the north — and 
perhaps it is the last time that it will be necessary to send 
men to the assault of this evil position which has earned 
the nickname of "Devil's Wood" from soldiers who have 
been through it and out of it. 

As one of our officers said to me this morning, "I wish to 
goodness we could wipe the place off the map, or burn it off. 
A good forest fire there would cleanse the ground of this 
filthy wreckage of trees which has been a death-trap to so 
many good fellows." 

It is a queer thing that so many trees are still standing, 



162 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

and that it still looks like a wood as I saw it the other day 
when the enemy was barraging this side of it. In spite of 
all the trees that have been cut down by shells the foliage 
still looks dense at a distance and hides all the horror under- 
neath. 

To-day many more trees have been slashed off and hurled 
upon other fallen trunks. If the wood had been drier the 
forest fire would have blazed. I am told that our concen- 
tration of guns for this morning's bombardment secured 
the most intense series of barrages upon one position since 
the battle of Picardy began twenty-seven days ago; twice 
as heavy as any similar artillery attack. 

The bombardment began this early morning, and took 
line after line from south to north above the ground held 
by our men, in progressive blocks of fire. Our batteries 
over an area of several miles, from the long-range heavies 
to the i8-pounders far forward, flung every size of shell 
into this "Devil's Wood," and filled it with high explosives 
and shrapnel so that one great volume of smoke rose from 
it and covered it in a dense black pall. 

It seems impossible that any Germans there could still be 
left alive, but it is too soon yet to know whether our men 
found any of them crouching in holes or lying under the 
shelter of great trunks and roots. Perhaps a few German 
soldiers may come out from this place of death having es- 
caped by what seems like a miracle, except that every day 
men do escape in the strangest way from shells which burst 
above them and under them and around them. 

But there will not be many who may tell the tale of this 
morning's bombardment of the wood, for the enemy has 
not had time to make an elaborate system of dug-outs here, 
deep enough to protect them from 6-inch or 8-inch shells, 
but had no more cover than our own men who held the 
wood when it was the turn of the enemy's artillery. 



THE DEVIL'S WOOD 163 



I was talking to some of these men this morning', and 
they all had the same tale to tell. "Devil's Wood," said one 
of them — a shock-headed Peter in shorts, who had not lost 
his sense of humour, though a good deal of blood, up there 
— ^"this Delville Wood, as it is called politely by fellows 
who don't know the look of it or the smell of it, is easily 
the worst place on earth, as far as I can guess. 

"It's just crowded with corpses, and to stay there is to 
join that company. The only cover one can get is to crawl 
under a log and hope for the best, or crawl into a shell- 
hole and expect the worst — which generally arrives. I had 
the devil's own luck — a puncture of the left leg — so I can't 
walk back there." 

He was amazed to have come out so easily, and because 
he still had life, and could see the sun shining through the 
flap of a tent, he was in high spirits, like all our men who 
have had the luck to get a "cushie wound," which in this 
war is the best of luck to men in such places as "Devil's 
Wood." 

The other men were eloquent about the German snipers 
who were hidden in the foliage of trees with rifles and 
machine-guns and waited very patiently until any of our 
men began to crawl through the tree trunks. That game 
is finished. Our bombardment this morning must have 
swept away all such men with whatever weapon they had. 

Devil's Wood has become more crowded with dead, and 
it is over these bodies that our men stumbled this morning 
when they went forward slowly and cautiously behind the 
great barrage of our guns which cleared the way for them. 
They advanced in waves, halting while another barrage was 
maintained for half an hour or more ahead. They had 
to cross Princes-street, which was a sunken road made into 
something like a trench by the South Africans, and after- 



164 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

wards by Scots from home, striking across the glades from 
west to east, and then they pushed northwards. 

I have no details of the fighting, which is still in progress, 
but it is probable that the attack has succeeded without 
many casualties. It is in holding the ground that the worst 
time comes to the men who capture it. 



Meanwhile another attack has been made this morning, 
advancing eastwards to Delville Wood from Longueval, 
which is partly in and partly out of the wood, with the 
object of clearing out the enemy from the northern part 
of the village and joining up with the men advancing into 
the wood from the south, as I have just described. 

Here, again, not much more of the fighting is known, but 
we know the difficulties of the position, and it is not sur- 
prising that the hardest fighting has been happening here. 
The history of the fight that has gone on in this corner of 
ground since July 14 is one of the most wonderful things, 
for sheer stubborn courage, that has been done in all this 
great battle. 

The Scottish troops who first took Longueval, as I have 
described in a previous despatch, held part of the village in 
spite of heavy counter-attacks and incessant bombardments 
while the South Africans were in the adjoining wood of 
devilish fame. 

The home-grown Scots had a trench — a poor thing, but 
still called a trench — running from east to west at the south 
end of the village, and two parallel roads going out of this 
trench northwards through the ruins of the village. 

There were barricades up these two roads held by the 
Scots with machine-guns, and on the other side of the 
barricade, the roads were No Man's Land leading to the 
enemy, who were, and still remain, in bits of copse and 



THE DEVIL'S WOOD 165 

ruined gardens and old orchards, with their own machine- 
guns protected by strong emplacements. 

The Scots had a severe time, under almost continuous 
fire, and lost heavily. At night they were attacked from the 
orchard land by parties of German bombers, who advanced 
with desperate courage although swept back again and 
again by rifles and machine-guns and hand-grenades. 
Meanwhile the South Africans were being shelled to death 
in Delville Wood close by, and, as I have already told, the 
poor remnants of them were withdrawn. 

The troops in Longueval were replaced by others, who 
succeeded in clearing the enemy out of part of the orchard 
and capturing some of his machine-guns, but not enough to 
"clean up" this position, which was still very dangerous. 
It was another battalion of Scottish troops, together with 
English boys of the New Army, who captured Waterlot 
Farm, running down south-eastwards from Delville Wood, 
and made two or three very gallant attempts to get as far 
as Guillemont, and on July 22 another part of Longueval 
was taken a third time by these fine men, whose general has 
trained them to attack and to go on attacking. 



Delville Wood proved the stumbling block again. One 
young officer who was wounded here yesterday told me that 
he could get no kind of cover where he lay with his men 
at the edge of Delville Wood and on the outskirts of Lon- 
gueval. All night long there was the swish of machine- 
gun bullets above him, varied with shrapnel and bits of 
high explosive. 

He has only been out in France a fortnight, and two 
days ago came straight to the "Devil's Wood," into the 
heart of Inferno. 

On his first day he was surprised to come face to face 
with a German soldier. The young officer had been given 



166 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

orders to push out a patrol down a sap or shallow trench 
to reconnoitre the position of the enemy. He had not gone 
many yards before he met the enemy — a tall fellow in a 
steel helmet, followed by forty others. 

There was surprise on both sides and considerable alarm, 
but the English boy was first in with a revolver shot. He 
thinks now that he made a mistake because the Germans 
made no attack upon him and ran back into the wood, so 
that it is likely enough they had come forward to surrender, 
as a means of escape from our shell-fire. 

Our lieutenant came back to report, dodging snipers who 
"potted" at him from several directions, and then lying in 
a ditch until a fragment of shell caught him. 

"Longueval is the very devil," says this subaltern with 
two days' experience of war — and enough too. "With 
Delville Wood on its right it's not a healthy neighbourhood. 
But of course Brother Boche is getting it in the neck all the 
time, so he can't be pleased with his position." 

To-day there are other men attacking the same position, 
up against the same difficulties, subject to the same fire. 

Those who went before them have gained the immor- 
tality of history — a poor reward, perhaps, for great strug- 
gles and great suffering, but theirs, whatever the value of it, 
for all time, when the secrets of the war are told. 

The men who are now in are of the same breed, and 
will not fail for lack of courage, but as I write the guns are 
firing with a great tumult of noise over there, and new hivS- 
tory is in the making so that it cannot yet be known. 



6 

July 29 
I have already described in a previous despatch the great 
difficulties that have confronted our men in Longueval and 
Delville Wood, and I left off my last narrative at a time 
when our troops were making a strong attack upon both of 
those positions — the battalions on the left endeavouring 



THE DEVIL'S WOOD 167 

to clear the enemy from the north of Longueval, where they 
had machine-gun redoubts, and those on the right working 
up from the south through Delville Wood. 

The infantry advanced stage by stage behind our shell- 
fire — a very simple thing to write or read, but not at all a 
simple matter to troops walking under the hurricane of 
shells and depending for their lives upon the scientific ac- 
curacy of gunners calculating their range and their time- 
fuses a long way behind the lines, and unable to see the 
infantry advancing to attack. 

"It was queer to see the shells bursting in front of one," 
said a bright-eyed fellow, who had just come out of "Devil 
W^ood" with a lucky wound. "The line of them was just 
about seventy-five yards ahead of us, flinging up the ground 
and smashing everything. It was wonderful how the gun- 
ners kept it just ahead of us." 

Our men did not go through Delville Wood in one of 
those fine cheering rushes which are drawn sometimes by 
imaginative artists, and sometimes, but not often, happen. 
They went in scattered groups, keeping touch, but in ex- 
tended order and scrambling, stumbling, or crawling for- 
ward as best they could, in a place which had no clear 
track. 

There were not two yards of ground without a shell hole. 
Fallen trees and brushwood made a tangled maze. Old 
barricades smashed by shell fire and shallow trenches 
scraped up by men who had been digging their own graves 
at the same time made obstacles and pitfalls everywhere. 
Our men, heavily loaded with their fighting kits, with 
bombs slung about them, and with their bayonets fixed, 
could not go forward at a bound through this infernal 
wood. 

This wood had been taken four times by four waves of 
British troops. It had been retaken four times by four 
waves of German troops. It had been the dumping place 
of the artillery's most furious bombardments on both sides. 



168 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

so that these English boys of ours were advancing through 
a great graveyard of unburied dead. 

The ghastliness of the place has left its mark upon the 
minds of many men who are not troubled much by the 
sights of battle. I notice that some of them wince at the 
name of Delville Wood, and others — the officers mostly — 
laugh in a way that is not good to hear, because it is the 
laughter of men who realise the great gulf of irony that 
lies between the decent things of life and all this devildom. 



When our men advanced they were surprised to see men 
running away through the broken trees, and astonished, 
also, to see bits of white rag fluttering above some of the 
shell-holes. These white rags, tied to twigs, bobbed up and 
down or waved to and fro as signals. It was the white 
flag of surrender, held by German soldiers crouched at the 
bottom of the shell craters. From one of them a Red 
Cross flag waved in a frantic way. 

Our men went forward with their bayonets, and shouted 
"Come out of it, there!" and from each shell-hole came a 
German soldier, holding his hands up, and crying "Pity! 
Pity !" which is a word they seem to have learnt in case of 
need. 

"Some of them were so small and young," said a man 
who was fighting in this part of the wood, "that their uni- 
forms were much too big for them and their tunics came 
down to their knees." 

They were exceptional in youth and size, for all the 
prisoners I have seen since the beginning of our attack are 
tall, strapping fellows of the best fighting age; but it is 
possible that our men have come up against some of the 
19 1 6 class. When the English poked their bayonets at 
them, but not Into them, they fell on their knees and cried 
for mercy. 



THE DEVIL'S WOOD 169 

It was mercy asked and given at a time when our sol- 
diers were angry, for the enemy was firing a large num- 
ber of gas-shells. 

Early in the afternoon a good deal of the ground to the 
north of Longueval had been captured by very fierce fight- 
ing at close quarters in and about the orchard, where the 
enemy had machine-gun emplacements and a strong redoubt 
called Machine-gun House. Here they defended them- 
selves stubbornly behind barricades of broken bricks and 
fallen tree trunks and barbed wire, serving their guns in a 
deadly way. 

Several of our officers behaved with the utmost gal- 
lantry and led forward many bombing parties to the at- 
tack of the machine-gun emplacements, from which there 
came a continual swish of bullets. Our men were quite 
reckless in taking all risks, and made repeated attacks on 
this position left of Delville Wood until they captured or 
knocked out several of the machine-guns which had given 
most trouble. 

8 

In the meantime the troops on the right were gradually 
pushing their way up to the top of the wood, past Princes- 
street (an old trench dug by the Scots, and now battered 
out of shape by the morning's bombardment), and across 
a line of dug-outs made by the enemy — and very well made 
in the time. They are master diggers, the Germans, and 
they have the industry of ants. It is sometimes an industry 
inspired by fear; but, after all, fear is often the wisdom 
of defence, and in this case they fought longer because 
by night and day they had toiled to get shell-proof cover 
into which death could not enter easily. 

Some men of ours who were first to go into those dug- 
outs tell me that they were as deep as those they had seen 
in parts of the line where Germans have had months for 
their work. They had plenty of head cover, of timber 



170 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

balks and sandbags and earth, and inside them was room for 
twenty men or more. 

When our men came through the trees to them there 
were two officers sitting outside as though at a cottage 
doorway, and they seemed quite calm, except for their 
extreme pallor. 

They were both wounded, but not badly, and it is our 
men's idea that they had come to sit in the open in case 
they should be buried alive in the dug-outs by direct hits 
from our heavy shells. They rose, and showed their 
wounds, and surrendered. 

Some of our men went into the mouths of the dug-outs, 
and cautiously, with their bombs handy, down the dark 
steps. There were forms huddled up in that narrow stair- 
way, and they groaned at the touch of boots. They were 
badly wounded men, who had staggered down to get shelter 
and medical aid. Down below, in rooms about ten feet 
square and almost dark, were other wounded men lying 
about in their own blood. 

A lantern hanging on a nail in one of these places gave 
a dim flicker of light to the scene, and showed the white, 
unshaven faces of the men who, as our young soldiers came 
tramping and stumbling down, raised their heads, but had 
no strength to stand up. Two or three men, unwounded, 
or only slightly wounded, came forward with their hands 
held up a little, and bowed their heads as they muttered 
something which meant surrender. 

Early in the afternoon the enemy made a counter-attack 
upon the left of the wood and to the north of Longueval 
village. At the same time their artillery had received word 
somehow, by fugitives, that the wood was full of English, 
and that they could shell it without killing many of their 
own men. German "crumps" now began to crash through 
the trees, and a counter-bombardment of high explosives fell 
into the cratered earth. 

The attack by German infantry was made by strong par- 
ties of grenadiers, who came down saps above Longueval 



THE DEVIL'S WOOD 171 

and from a communication trench between Delville Wood 
and High Wood, They came on with great resolution, 
followed by machine-gunners, but they were received with 
rifle fire, bombs, and machine-gun fire from our own men. 

Some parties managed to work their way back into the 
orchard, and through the scattered trees about it, and there 
was some close and desperate fighting. For a time our men 
in one of the battalions were short of bombs, and sent back 
urgent messages for new supplies. 

"We had been hanging on to them," said one of the 
boys, "because it's always well to save them for a tight 
place, but of course we sent them up to the chaps in front." 
It was timely help, and all the German efforts to dislodge 
our men broke down with heavy loss, so that the ground 
was strewn with their dead and wounded. 

Many Germans were seen retreating over the high 
ground above Delville Wood, to the left. Parties of them 
ran along the sky-line, and then seemed to drop into a 
sunken road. 

So Delville Wood is ours again — and it is again under 
the fire of German guns instead of British guns, and the 
trouble is to know whether it is possible for either side to 
hold such a place without too great a sacrifice of life. It is 
easier to hold now that the ground to the north of Longue- 
val and in the western corner of the wood has been cleared 
of its hornets' nests^ — those hiding-places of machine-gun- 
ners who were able to send waves of bullets upon our ad- 
vancing men. 

That trouble, anyhow, is gone, and the enemy feels the 
loss, because several new counter-attacks last night failed 
as completely as those made earlier. They were our ma- 
chine-guns which met them in their old haunts, and made 
them pay back a heavy price for the toll they had taken 
before. 



XIX 
THE WORK OF THE GUNS 



I 

July 24 
More ground has been gained to-day at Pozieres and the 
Australians after their first great assault before dawn yes- 
terday have been pushing across the Bapaume Road, which 
goes through the town, and bombing out the German ma- 
chine-gunners and holding parties on the western side, so 
that not many enemies are left among the ruins or under- 
ground in Pozieres itself. There is higher ground beyond, 
towards the Windmill, and further north, for which a fight 
will have to be made before the key of the position is really 
captured, but the advance of English regiments on the left is 
a menace to the enemy which must cause him grave anxiety. 
The line has also been thrust forward a little by a series of 
posts and joined up with positions in the neighbourhood 
of High Wood, where the enemy is again bombarding heav- 
ily, so that no further progress has been made in this direc- 
tion during the day. 

One curious incident was observed here by the troops 
holding the ground on the south of High Wood. They sud- 
denly noticed a body of men coming out of the glades, and 
were surprised to see that they were in kilts. 

For a moment it may have occurred to them that they 
were some of the wounded Scots who had fought through 
High Wood a few days previously. That could hardly 
be possible, however, because the enemy is in strong num- 
bers in the upper part of the wood. An officer staring 
through his glasses uttered a word of astonishment and two 

172 



THE WORK OF THE GUNS 173 

of anger. The men on the sky-line were Germans dressed 
up in kilts taken from the dead. Our guns put some shells 
over them, and they disappeared below the ridge. 

For the past few days the increasing strength of the 
enemy's artillery, especially of heavy guns, has been notice- 
able, and he has been firing at longer range, and rather 
wildly "into the blue" in order to make things uncom- 
fortable behind our lines. 

Owing to the great superiority of our observation and 
the complete failure of his own aircraft — our anti-aircraft 
guns have hardly been called upon to fire a round during 
the last few weeks — he is wasting a great deal of heavy 
ammunition. This is different from earlier days of the 
battle when the German gunners had to concentrate their 
fire upon very definite points of attack, and were completely 
mastered in many of their positions by the immensity of 
our bombardment. 



The work of our artillery is a wonderful achievement, 
and all the success we have gained during this great battle 
has been largely due to the science and daring of our gun- 
ners and to the labour of all those thousands of men at 
home who have sweated in soul and body to make the guns 
and the ammunition. 

It is only just and fair to the munition workers to say 
this thing and to let them know that their toil has helped 
enormously to break the German lines, and that without 
their imtiring effort all the courage of our soldiers, all their 
sacrifice of blood would have been in vain. If they slacken 
ofif now in the factories and workshops these men of ours 
in places like High Wood and Longueval and Pozieres will 
no longer have the support that is most desperately needed 
now that the enemy is bringing up many new batteries 
against us. 

Flesh and blood cannot fight against high explosives. It 



174 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

can only die, and the whole history of the battle is not to be 
written in reference to bayonets or rifles but to guns. It has 
been, and is still, a battle of guns, and our heroic infantry 
has only been able to get forward or to hold its ground 
when the artillery preparation has been complete, and the 
artillery support overwhelmingly strong. Should this fail 
it would not be fighting, but massacre. 

From the early days of the battle onwards our artillery 
has been great, in weight of metal, in science, in the vast- 
ness of its supplies of shells, in the superb courage and skill 
of its men, who have endured a continuous strain upon them 
night and day, for four weeks. They broke the German 
spirit and the German strength to the point when our in- 
fantry could attack with something like a chance, almost 
for the first time in this war along the British front. 

By the work of aviators and artillery observation officers 
we knew the positions of most of the enemy's batteries and 
the geography of all his communication trenches, transport 
roads, and supply depots. Our guns which had been 
brought up secretly were unmasked one morning when the 
great bombardment began before the battle, and poured un- 
ceasing shells upon all those positions, smothering them 
with high explosives and shrapnel, while the field guns 
closer up were cutting the enemy's wire. 

Trenches were swept out of existence, batteries were 
blown to bits — I have seen many of those broken German 
guns now standing as trophies on French lawns — and the 
roads were swept by storms of death. The barrage was a 
great wall through which nothing could pass. The Ger- 
man soldiers in their lines could get neither food nor water. 
No reinforcements could be sent to them. 



Three of our own soldiers who were taken prisoners on 
the morning of the first attack could not be sent back into 



THE WORK OF THE GUNS 175 

the German lines because no escort dared to go with them 
through the barrage. They were thrust down into a dug- 
out with some of the German soldiers and saw and suffered 
the effect of our fire. The enemy had no food to give them, 
having none for themselves, and they were tortured by 
thirst. 

For five days they endured this until nearly dead, but 
when the Germans were to dazed to act as guards, 
these three English soldiers managed to crawl out of the 
dug-out and by a miracle of luck escaped back to their 
own lines over No Man's Land. 



A German officer, now one of our prisoners, bears wit- 
ness to the work of our gunners. He was sent with his 
battalion from Verdun to Contalmaison and was detrained 
at Bapaume. There he began a painful experience of shell- 
fire through an accident to one of the German 12 -inch 
guns, which burst and blew up several carriages of the 
train killing some of his men. But the rest of his journey 
was made terrible by British gun-fire. With his battalion 
he came down a road which was being flung up by our 15- 
inch and 12-inch guns. Some more of his men were killed, 
and he came on towards Bazentin, where he was under 
the fire of our 8-inch howitzers and nine-point-twos. More 
of his men were killed, but he went on until near Contal- 
maison he came within the range of our i8-pounders and 
lost the remainder of his men. At Contalmaison he was 
immediately taken prisoner by our attack and was rejoiced 
to come to his journey's end alive. 

"Your artillery," he said, "is better than anything I had 
seen before, even at Verdun, and worse than anything I had 
suffered." 

All the German officers with whom I have spoken are 
surprised that an "Army of Amateurs," as they call us, 



176 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

should produce such scientific artillery work in so short 
a time, and they also pay tribute to the daring of the field 
gunners, who go so far forward to support the infantry 
attacks. 

'They came up," said one of them, speaking of the 
Mametz Wood attack, "like charioteers in a Roman circus, 
at full gallop. Many of their horses were killed, but the 
men were reckless of danger, and placed their batteries in 
the open as though at manceuvres." 



The field observing officers are audacious almost to the 
point of foolhardiness. Before the ground of attack has 
been cleared of Germans they walk calmly up with a 
telephonist, sit down on a crest or a knoll commanding a 
field of observation, and send back messages to a battery a 
mile or so behind. 

When the territory round Contalmaison was still swarm- 
ing with Germans, one of our officers went forward in this 
way and made himself at home on the top of a German dug- 
out, recording flashes and getting excellent information. 
He went back to his battery for an hour or two, and 
when he returned to his chosen spot found it occupied by 
Germans. They wanted to round him up, but he fired a few 
revolver shots and retired with dignity — to choose another 
place not quite so crowded with the enemy. Such tales 
seem fantastic and impossible. But they are true. 

There is no doubt that many German batteries have 
been destroyed, apart from those which have been cap- 
tured. I saw to-day a map, which told, by little coloured 
dots, a great drama of war. Each dot represented a Ger- 
man battery discovered by our gunners since the beginning 
of the battle, and each colour the day it was discovered, 
and they were arranged on the map so that one could see 



THE WORK OF THE GUNS 177 

the exact distribution of the enemy's guns, as it has changed 
during the course of the battle. 

Soon after our bombardment began they began to drift 
down new batteries and there were clusters of little coloured 
dots at certain spots. But a day or two later they were 
wiped out, or withdrawn further back. There was one thick 
cluster of green dots to the north of Bazentin-le-Grand. It 
represented many batteries. A day later they had gone. 

"What happened?" I asked. 

The gunner officer laughed. 

"We just smothered 'em." 

They were "smothered" by storms of shells which burst 
all over these battery positions, over every yard of ground 
there, so that no gun emplacement could escape. 

But other dots are appearing on the map — other little 
clusters of colour, further away to the right. The enemy is 
massing new batteries, and it is from these positions that 
Delville Wood, High Wood, and other parts of our line 
are being shelled night and day with fierce and increasing 
violence. 

Those batteries are not so easy to reach. To keep their 
fire down, and still more to knock them out we must have a 
continual increasing flow of guns and ammunition — ammu- 
nition in vast and unimaginable quantities, for the figures 
I have heard to-day of the ammunition we have used during 
the past three weeks are beyond one's range of imagination. 
The munition workers at home must not relax their efforts 
if we are to continue our successes. It is by their labour that 
the lives of our men can be saved. All the time it is a 
battle of guns. 



XX 

THE FIGHTING ROUND WATERLOT FARM 



fi) 

July 30 
There was some infantry fighting to-day in co-operation 
with the French on our right wing, and as far as our own 
troops were concerned some progress was made to the east 
of Waterlot Farm, which is on the road going down from 
Longueval to Guillemont. It was a very hot day, with a 
scorching sun, but artillery observation was not easy dur- 
ing certain hours owing to a rather thick haze. In spite of 
this our guns maintained a heavy bombardment upon the 
enemy's line in support of our troops, who advanced over 
difficult ground. 

Many prisoners surrendered at an early stage of this 
progress, one batch of 170 men being captured first and 
other groups being rounded up later, bringing the total 
number to something more than 200. 

It was rather more than a week ago that some of our 
men pushed our line down from Longueval to Waterlot 
Farm, on the road to Guillemont, which they held against 
repeated attacks. 

The Germans are very busy digging new trenches to the 
east of the road, and through these they are able to send 
up bombing parties and machine-gunners to protect the 
northern and western approaches to the ruins of Guillemont 
itself. 



The first forward movement from Waterlot Farm was 
made by some Scots who had already been fighting hard 

178 



FIGHTING ROUND WATERLOT FARM 179 

since July 14, when they helped to break the second German 
line. These Scots, whom I have met in many fields of war 
during the past year or more, had done well elsewhere, and 
chased the enemy out of his Hnes. They were grim men, 
and ready for a new "crack at the ould Boche" when they 
took over from another regiment at Waterlot Farm, south 
of Delville Wood. It was not a farm such as Caldecott 
would have drawn for his coloured picture-book. There 
were no cows or sheep in the neighbourhood. It was a col- 
lection of ruined buildings and yards which the enemy 
seems to have used as a dumping ground for old iron and 
machinery. There were several derehct engines here, and 
a steel cupola for a heavy gun-emplacement, like those at 
Liege in the early days of the war, and a litter of wheels 
and rods and wire, mostly smashed by our shell fire. As a 
farm it left much to be desired, but the Scots settled down 
here and made themselves as comfortable as possible in 
the circumstances. 

In the darkness of that night and the next patrols went 
out to discover the strength of the enemy. Our young 
officers and their men, crawling forward over the broken 
ground, satisfied themselves that "the Boche" was there in 
strength. They only had to listen to the patter of bullets 
which whipped the grass to know that he had plenty of 
machine-guns unpleasantly near. 

Those who had not met any of those bullets came back 
with their reports, and the artillery bombarded the enemy's 
trenches to make the work of the infantry easier. An ad- 
vance was made from the farm before dawn, led by bomb- 
ing parties of the Scots. 

It was a quiet and silent walk. The enemy's machine- 
guns were chattering a little, but there was no great fire, 
and the Scots reached a trench north of the railway line 
with only three men and one officer wounded. "That's 
nothing," said the officer, and he carried on. 

It was impossible to go further at that time. The enemy 
were_ holding, very strongly, a trench immediately across 



180 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the railway line, and they had dug a nest of new trenches 
on the east of the road, from which they could enfilade 
our men with rifle and machine-gun fire. 

The Scots got well down into a trench which was mostly 
a series of shell-craters, and looked to their rifles and 
bombs. There was not much doubt as to what was coming. 
It came down the main road from Guillemont — a large 
force of German soldiers with machine-guns. 

At the same time, from the trench parallel with ours, the 
Germans sprang on to their parapets and came over. The 
Scots were hardly strong enough to resist these attacks 
supported by enfilade fire. They were ordered to fall back, 
and the retirement was carried out without disorder — to 
say "without panic" would be ridiculous to these men who 
have fought a score of battles since they came to France — 
and it was covered by the machine-gunners, who remained 
as a rear-guard, sweeping down the advanced parties of the 
enemy, so as to gain time for our men to get back. 



A second move from Waterlot Farm was made by the 
same Scots, supported by other troops. The enemy suf- 
fered badly. A very strong force of German bombers made 
a brave counter-attack on the Scots, but were caught by rifle 
and machine-gun fire, and fell almost to a man. 

"Practically wiped out" was the way in which an officer 
of the Scots described it. During the afternoon a patrol 
of our snipers went out on a hunting expedition and sighted 
a party of Germans carrying down ammunition boxes. Not 
all of them reached their journey's end, for the Scottish 
snipers are good shots. 

Some of the German soldiers were sick of the business, 
and had had too much shell-fire. When dusk was creeping 
over the countryside a group of them came out of a ruined 



FIGHTING ROUND WATERLOT FARM 181 

farm — it had really been a farm in the old days of peace — 
standing on the left of the main road to Guillemont. 

They came holding up their hands as a sign of surrender, 
and some of the Scots went out to bring them in. But the 
enemy in the trenches beyond opened fire on their own 
countrymen, and some of our own were killed and wounded. 

When, later on, another party came out, they were not 
received in a friendly spirit. . . . That night the Scottish 
stretcher-bearers went out to bring in their wounded, and 
they found among them one man of theirs who had been 
discovered by a German patrol, but left behind because he 
gave them his water to drink. They thanked him, and said 
"Good luck, and a safe return to your own lines!" but 
when they went away he thought he had been left to die. 



XXI 
THE PETER PANS OF WAR 



I 

July 31 

For two days now the sun has been blazing hot, and our 
fighting men have been baked brown. It is not good fight- 
ing weather either for guns or men. A queer haze is about 
the fields, as thick at times as a November mist and yet 
thrilling with heat, so that artillery observation is not good 
for anything like long-range shooting. 

Mametz Wood, which is now well behind the lines, looms 
up vaguely, and, beyond, Delville Wood is hardly visible 
except as a low-lying smudge on the sky-line. Yet the 
sun is not shaded by the haze, and strikes down glaringly 
upon the white roads and the trampled fields, upon transport 
crawling forward in clouds of dust that rise like the smoke 
of fires about them, and upon soldiers trudging along with 
their rifles slung and their packs slipping, their iron helmets 
thrust forward over the eyes and their faces powdered 
white as millers'. 

It is hot and thirsty work and painful to the spirit and 
flesh of men, even along roads that are not pebbled with 
shrapnel bullets. Men on the march to-day were glad of 
frequent halts, and flung themselves down on the waysides 
panting and sweating, moistening their dusty lips with 
parched tongues and fumbling for their water-bottles. 
They were lucky to have water, and knew their luck. It 
was worse for the men who were fighting yesterday in the 
same heat wave up by Waterlot Farm and further south by 
Maltzhom Farm, not far from Guillemont. 

182 



THE PETER PANS OF WAR 183 

Some of them drank their water too soon, and there was 
not a dog's chance of getting any more until nightfall. 
Thirst, as sharp as redhot needles through the tongue, tor- 
tured some of these men of ours. And yet they were lucky, 
too, and knew their luck. There were other men suffering 
worse than they, the wounded lying in places beyond the 
quick reach of stretcher-bearers. "It was fair awfu' to hear 
them crying," said one of their comrades. "It was 'Water! 
water! For Christ's sake — water!' till their voices died 
away." 

As usual the stretcher-bearers were magnificent and came 
out under heavy fire to get these men in until some of them 
fell wounded themselves. And other men crawled down 
to where their comrades lay and, in spite of their own thirst, 
gave the last dregs of their water to these stricken men. 
There were many Sir Philip Sidneys there, not knighted 
by any accolade except that of charity, and very rough fel- 
lows in their way of speech, but pitiful. 

There was one of them who lay wounded with some water 
still in the bottle by his side. Next to him was a wounded 
German, groaning feebly and saying "Wasser! Wasser!" 
The Yorkshire lad knew enough to understand that word 
of German. He stretched out his flask and said, "Hi, 
matey, tak' a swig o' that." They were two men who had 
tried to kill each other. 



On one part of the battlefields recently were some of the 
Bantam battalions, those little game-cocks for whom most 
of us out here have a warm corner in our hearts, because 
they are the smallest fighting men in the British army, and 
the sturdiest, pluckiest little men one can meet on a long 
day's march. They have been under fire in several parts of 
the line, where it is not good for any men to be except 
for duty's sake. 

It has generally been their fate to act in support of 



184 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

other troops — troops whom it is an honour to support 
when they go into action, because their regiments have won 
fame on all the battlefields of Europe since the Napoleonic 
wars. 

But it is always a dangerous honour to be in support. 
The attacking troops have often an easier time than those 
who lie behind them with scanty cover. It is here that 
the enemy's barrage is likely to fall, and there is not much 
fun in lying under shell-fire hour after hour, perhaps for 
two days, without seeing the enemy or getting at him. The 
ground becomes strewn with dead and wounded. It is 
then that to ''hold on" means the highest heroism. 

The Bantams held on in hours like this, held on gamely 
and with wonderful grit. They became great diggers, and 
because they are not very high, a shallow trench was good 
enough for cover, and they burrowed like ants. "They 
would as soon forget their rifles as their shovels," said 
one of their officers to-day. "There is no need to tell 
them to dig. They get to work mighty quick, being old 
soldiers now who have learnt by experience." 

They are old soldiers in cunning and knowledge, but 
there are young lads among them. Old or young (and 
there are many middle-aged Bantams who stand no higher 
than five feet in their socks), they are all the Peter Pans 
of the British Army — the Boys-who-wouldn't-grow-up, and, 
like the heroic Peter Pan himself, who was surely the first 
of the Bantams, they are eager for single combat with the 
greatest enemy of England, Home and Beauty who may 
come along. They had their chance yesterday, and brought 
back a number of enormous Bavarians as prisoners fairly 
captured. 

A certain Bantam, ex-boilermaker of Leeds ("the grand- 
est city in the world," he says), and the King's Jester of 
his battalion was enormously amused by the incident. He 
said that each Bantam looked no higher than the matchstick 
to the candle with each Bavarian. To all these little men 
the German soldiers looked like giants, but like so many 



THE PETER PANS OF WAR 185 

Hop-o'-my-Thumbs they took charge of these Bavarian 
Blunderbores and brought them back in triumph. They 
went searching for them in the ruins of Longueval some 
days ago, and found some of them sniping from the trees. 
They brought them down with a crash, and collected sou- 
venirs. 

This village was a dreadful place when some of the 
Bantams went into it. Only a few ruins remained, and 
about these many soldiers of many different regiments went 
prowling in search of Germans who were still concealed in 
dug-outs and shell-craters, and who still defended the out- 
skirts of the village with machine-guns, which swept the 
streets. 

There were Highlanders there, so "fey" after their 
fierce fighting that they went about with their bayonets, 
prodding imaginary Germans, and searching empty dug- 
outs as though the enemy were crowded there. The ground 
was strewn with dead, and from ruined trenches and piles 
of broken bricks there came the awful cries of wounded 
men. 



There were many wounded — Germans as well as British 
— and one man tended them with a heroic self-sacrifice 
which is described with reverence and enthusiasm by many 
officers and men. It was a chaplain attached to the South 
Africans who fought so desperately and so splendidly in 
"Devil's Wood." This "padre" came up to a dressing sta- 
tion established in the one bit of ruin which could be used 
for shelter and applied himself to the wounded with a 
spiritual devotion that was utterly fearless. 

In order to get water for them, and the means of mak- 
ing tea, he went many times to a well which was a danger 
spot marked down by German snipers, who shot our men, 
agonising with thirst, as though they were tigers going down 
to drink. They are justified according to the laws of war, 



186 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

but it was a cruel business. Tiiere was one German officer 
there, in a shell-hole, not far from the well, who sat with his 
revolver handy to pick off any men who ventured to the 
well, and he was a dead shot. 

But he did not shoot the padre. Something in the fine 
figure of that chaplain, his disregard of all the bullets 
snapping about him, the tireless, fearless way in which he 
crossed a street of death in order to help the wounded, held 
back the trigger-finger of the German officer, and he let 
him pass. He passed many times, untouched by bullets or 
machine-gun fire, and he went into its worst places, which 
were pits of horror, carrying hot tea, which he had made 
from the well-water for men in agony because of their 
wounds and thirst. 

They were officers of the Bantams who told me the 
story, though the padre was not theirs, and their generous 
praise was fine to hear. It was good also to hear the talk 
of these men who had just come out of battle with the 
grime and dirt of war upon them, about the men they love 
to command. 

These young officers are keen, bright-eyed fellows, anr' 
in spite of all they had been through — things not yet to be 
described — they bore but little trace of their endurance. I 
sat with them under a tent propped up by stretcher-poles, 
with one flap tied to an old cart, while the men who had 
just marched down were lying in groups on the field, mostly 
without shirts and socks, because of the heat and the long 
time since they had changed their clothes. 

Afterwards I went among the men — all these Peter Pans 
— who came from all parts of Scotland and the North of 
England, so that their speech is not easy to a man from the 
South. They were talking of German snipers and German 
shells, of all that they had suffered and done, and the boiler- 
maker, their comic turn, was egged on to say outrageous 
things which caused roars of laughter from the Bantam 
crowd. The language of the boilermaker on the subject 
of Germans and the pleasures of war would be quite un- 



THE PETER PANS OF WAR 187 

printable, but the gist of it was full of virtue and suited 
the philosophy of these five-foot Coeurs-de-Lion, who were 
grinning round him. 

It is the philosophy of our modern knights, who take 
more risks in one day than their forebears in a lifetime, 
and find a grim and sinister humour in the worst things of 
war. 



XXII 
THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 



I 

August 5 
Last evening, just as dusk was creeping over the battle- 
fields, the Australians, with English troops on their left, 
sprang over the parapets of their lines at Pozieres, advanced 
up five hundred yards of rising ground, stormed through 
the trenches of the second German line, and captured the 
crest of the ridge which looks down to Courcelette and 
Martinpuich. 

It was a great and tragic surprise to the enemy. They 
may have believed, I think they did believe, that after the 
series of battles in the July fighting, the spirit of the British 
offensive was broken, and that our troops were too tired to 
make fresh assaults. The German generals tried to put 
comfort into the hearts of their men by telling them that 
the British guns and the British soldiers had done their 
worst, and that the attack was at an end. The lull deceived 
them. 

Because two or three days had passed without any in- 
fantry action after thirty days of unceasing battle there may 
well have seemed to the enemy a reasonable hope that we 
should content ourselves with digging in and holding the 
ground gained. One thing, however, must have disheart- 
ened the German troops and prevented any kind of nervous 
recuperation after the appalling strain of the month's shell- 
fire. The British guns, vhich should have been worn out, 
and the British gunners supposed to be exhausted, went on 
firing. 

z88 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 189 

They went on all yesterday, as on the day before and 
more than a month of yesterdays, with their long, steady 
bombardment, that bombardment which is now rumbling 
with its sullen shocks of sound as I write, and as it goes on 
night and day. Long-range guns were reaching out to 
places far ahead the German lines. Courcelette was a ruin. 
Martinpuich was falling to pieces. There is no safety for 
Germans anywhere and up in the lines no safety except in 
the deepest dug-outs for officers and lucky men. 



As many men as could get into dug-outs to the north of 
Pozieres were down there yesterday, listening to the crashes 
of our heavy shells which were smashing the trenches 
about them and screaming overhead on more distant jour- 
neys. 

The Australians and English troops, including men of 
Kent, Sussex, and Surrey regiments, were waiting in their 
own trenches. 

A crescent moon came up. The woods darkened. Shad- 
ows crept down from Thiepval. Distant cornfields in the 
world beyond the war, so near as miles are counted, so far 
away in peace, became bronzed and red, and then all dark 
and vague in the evening mist. Above, the sky was still 
blue, with stars very bright and glistening. 

It was, I think, about 9 o'clock — as the clock goes now in 
France and England — when the British troops left their 
trenches. They went quietly without any great clamour 
across that 500 yards of ground, dusky figures, the brown 
of their khaki no different from the colour of the earth 
around them, through the gloom of coming night. The 
Australians worked up to the right, the English to the left. 
Before them was the German second line on a front of 
about 3,000 yards, and part of that long line which was 
pierced and taken on July 14, between Bazentin-le-Petit and 



190 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

Longueval, when the British troops went up in waves and 
astounded the world by their achievement. It was no longer 
a line of trenches. 

It was a wavy line of hummocky and tumbled earth 
along innumerable shell-craters such as I described at 
Montauban. Only the dug-outs, or some of them, still 
remained in all this chaos, filled with living and wounded 
and dead. 

Out of the wreck of earth, as our men advanced, living 
men came out in groups. They came forward through the 
dusky night with their hands held up — pitiable shadows. 
Most of them were utterly nerve-broken — beaten and 
broken men with no fight left in them, but only an animal 
fear, and desire of life. 

Their surrender was received, and the English and Aus- 
tralians put guards about them and sent them back to our 
lines while they went on to clear out the dug-outs of men 
who refused to come out, or could not come out, and to 
deal with those who further back had still the courage to 
defend themselves. 

There was some bayonet fighting and bombing. From 
behind the German lines in isolated redoubts machine-guns 
were at work spraying out bullets. But our casualties were 
very few; all told, less, I imagine, than in any action of 
importance during the Battle of the Somme. The enemy's 
losses were heavy. More than 400 prisoners have passed 
the toll-bar, and others are being brought down. In dead 
he lost more than that, and his wounded must number high 
figures. It was a blow which must be grievous to him after 
all the hammer-strokes of the month, and what is most 
significant is the troubled state of his soldiers, these dazed 
and nerve-shattered men who surrendered. They had no 
pride left in them. 

These men were mostly of the 17th and i8th Reserve 
Division of the 9th Reserve Corps with miscellaneous drafts 
from various Ersatz or reserve battalions, the scourings of 
the last class whom Germany can, I suppose, put into the 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 191 

field. By that I do not mean they are physically weak or 
undersized — there are very few German soldiers who could 
be described like that — but they are not soldiers of the 
proud and highly-trained kind who fought in earlier days 
of the war. They are men with families and with a great 
yearning for peace, and no love of this massacre which is 
ordained by their warlords. 

During the night the troops behind them were rallied 
to make three separate counter-attacks. They came on very 
bravely — there is nothing the matter with German courage 
as a rule — but in a spirit of self-sacrifice and stupidly. They 
walked into our barrage, and our shells caught them and 
shattered them. 

To-day up to the time I write there has been no further 
attack by infantry, but the enemy's guns have opened and 
maintained a very fierce fire upon the positions gained by 
our troops. 

The new part of the German second line now in our hands 
makes up with the other part of his line captured on July 14 
a distance of nearly 10,000 yards. 



3 

August 7 
All last night, which was still and calm, as the weather 
goes, there was a great hammering of guns, and this morn- 
ing, when I went out in the direction of Thiepval, the ar- 
tillery on both sides was hard at work. The enemy was drop- 
ping "heavy stuff" in the neighbourhood of Pozieres, with 
occasional shots at long range into fields about cjuiet vil- 
lages behind the lines which look utterly peaceful in the 
warm light of this August sun gleaming upon their church 
spires and upon the thick foliage of the trees around them. 
It was in the midst of a tumult of guns and below the 
long resonant journeying of great shells on their way to the 
enemy's territory that I sat to-day with some of the officers 



192 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

who have just chased the Germans out of their trenches to 
the north of Pozieres. 

They were all men of Kent around me. The captain is a 
merry soul, who laughs most heartily over his hairbreadth 
escapes and still more loudly when he describes little ex- 
ploits which would make most men shudder at the mere 
remembrance. 

The colonel of his battalion, who sat opposite, is of a dif- 
ferent type, quiet and thoughtful, but with a sense of hu- 
mour also that lights his eyes. And two places off was the 
M.O. — a doctor who loves his men and would not leave this 
battalion of the Kents for any other in the Army (he has 
patched up all their bodies after every scrap and did heroic 
work for them the other night). 

Before the fighting began the colonel took the jovial cap- 
tain up to the line "tO' view the Promised Land," as he 
called it. And the Promised Land looked very uninviting 
on this high ridge — above the blackened ruins of Pozieres — 
where the German second lines were guarded by a tangle 
of barbed wire. It was also difficult to look at it very 
long or very closely, because the enemy was "lathering" 
the field of observation with every kind of "crump" and 
shell. 

"When we popped over the parapet," says the captain, 
"we advanced into the middle of the Brock's Benefit, and 
it was obvious that the blinking Boche had got the wind up." 

That is to say the enemy was sending up distress signals 
to his guns, and in the anticipation of an attack, was flinging 
coloured lights over to our lines so as to illuminate any 
British infantry who might be advancing. These lights 
were fired out of a special kind of pistol, and when they fell 
flared up with vivid red and green fires. At the same time 
the enemy's machine-guns played upon any figures so re- 
vealed, so that it was almost certain death to be in those 
flare lights. At great risk several men sprang forward intO' 
the illumination and kicked out the burning canisters. Then 
in the momentary darkness, the leading companies advanced 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 193 

in waves towards the German trenches south of Mouquet 
(or, as the soldiers call it, Moo-Cow) Farm. 



The colonel of the battalion went very gallantly with his 
men, and as he drew near to the enemy's line saw two fig- 
ures silhouetted like his own men had been against the 
enemy's lights. He called out to them, thinking they might 
be his own men working forward on his right. But he saw 
they were Germans when one man threw up his hands as a 
sign of surrender, and the other dropped on to one knee to 
fire a rifle shot. The colonel sprang forward, covering them 
with his revolvers, and took both of them prisoner. 

Without many casualties in spite of machine-gun fire, 
our men reached the German trenches. Great heroism was 
shown by a young lieutenant and a party of bombers who 
went first over No Man's Land so quickly behind our bar- 
rage that they risked death by our own shells and came 
against the first defence. The officer and several of this 
first wave were found lying wounded 400 yards further 
than the "jump-out" position, and it was their quick ad- 
vance which scared the enemy and helped to demoralise 
him. 



One of the prisoners taken later was a forward observing 
officer, a Prussian giant well over six feet high and enor- 
mously stout, and he was put in charge of a little Kentish 
man standing five foot one in his socks. The German 
giant was very frightened at the machine-gun fire of his 
own people, which was whipping over the ground, and he 
went back crouching in a bear-like way, prodded from be- 
hind by the wee man in khaki. This sight, illuminated by 
the flares, was seen by the men left behind in our own 



194 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

trenches, and they stood up on their parapets laughing and 
cheering wildly. 

But there were other trenches ahead, and the men "hared" 
off to these, and found them held by scared men. The 
Kentish men started bombing down the trench "like mad," 
and blocked it at each end in case of accidents, while a young 
officer posted a machine-gun on the left of it. 

The position, however, became quite obviously an unten- 
able one, when the Germans rallied and attacked in bomb- 
ing parties from the farm. Many of them were cut down 
by the young officer with his Lewis gun and by the Kentish 
grenadiers, but they brought up machine-guns and made the 
position "very hot." A lance-corporal behaved very gal- 
lantly in going back 700 yards under heavy fire to report 
the situation, and volunteered to return with the message 
that the patrol could not be supported and must fall back in 
small groups. This he did, and returned again in safety 
with the other party, who brought with them three more 
prisoners "as samples" (to use their own phrase), including 
the huge officer whom I have described previously. 

They have funny fellows among them — this British bat- 
talion — and the amount of comedy they extract from all 
this grim business is astounding. There is one of their 
number who was once a member of Fred Karno's troupe, 
and has not lost his old instincts for a knockabout turn. 
When he took a prisoner he caught him by the hand and 
danced a "pas de quatre" with him. 

"Offizier?" asked the astounded man. 

"Oui, oui," said the comic turn, "and you — prisonnier — 
savez ?" 

So much for the men of Kent, though I should like to 
tell more if I had the time to-night about their medical 
officer who tended all the wounded men of two companies 
and thirty wounded Germans in a subterranean dressing sta- 
tion (there was no comedy there), and more about their 
very fine and fearless colonel, and about the cheerful cap- 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 195 

tain, whose adventures since the war began would fill a 
book as strange as the Memoirs of Marbot. 

To-day other men were fighting in the same place, and 
I must tell at some later time the fine work of the Surrey and 
Sussex men, 

6 

August ii 

The enemy has made several attempts to regain the high 
ground taken from him to the north of Pozieres, and yes- 
terday evening, between the hours of five and seven o'clock, 
he sent out a strong body of infantry to attack our trenches. 
It was a curious, vain, and tragic endeavour, like several 
other counterattacks launched at the command of the Ger- 
man staff by men recently brought up as support troops, 
knowing quite obviously nothing of the country in which 
they are called upon to fight, and just blundering out with 
a kind of desperate courage towards our lines. It was 
exactly thus last evening. 

From the prisoners we took it is certain knowledge that 
these troops had no familiarity with this ground between 
Mouquet Farm and the Windmill, and when they were 
ordered to attack regarded themselves as sheep sent to 
the slaughter. They knew only that the Australians were 
in front of them, and from what they have heard of the 
Australians they did not have much hope. 

What hope they had was in the guns behind them, and 
certainly, in spite of all the German guns we have knocked 
out by counter-battery work, and all those having had to 
shift their ground from day to day owing to our ceaseless 
searchings for their emplacements with the aid of our aerial 
scouts, the bombardment that preceded the German assault 
was intense and formidable. 

The Australians "stuck it," guessing what was to follow. 
In the trenches they have dug, and the shell craters, and the 
old German trenches which are now almost shapeless under 
our own and the enemy's fire, they held on, and kept their 



196 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

bombs ready, and their machine-guns handy, and watchful 
eyes, wherever a man could see, upon a row of broken tree 
stumps appearing over the crest of the Pozieres ridge beyond 
the Windmill. 

Then, below the crest on the other side of the ridge — the 
German side — is Mouquet Farm, called "Moo-cow Farm" 
by men who will still jest, whatever the conditions of life. 
A small valley or gully runs behind the farm towards the 
quarries, and it was from this that the German soldiers came 
streaming out in open order when their guns lengthened 
range so that they could get forward without walking into 
their own barrage. 

As it happened, they walked into our barrage. Our guns 
were waiting for them. At the end of a telephone wire was 
a gunner-general who does not keep people waiting very 
long when they are in need of his "heavies," and many gun- 
ner officers were standing by their batteries ready to give the 
word "Fire!" with their guns and howitzers registered on 
the line across which the enemy's troops would come as 
soon as they were ordered to attack. 

In our lines the trench mortar batteries were making 
ready to hurl their high explosives, and the Lewis gunners 
were eager to get to work instead of standing under German 
shell-fire. 

The enemy's infantry came straggling forward in ex- 
tended order, and in irregular waves. There were two bat- 
talions of them in the open — out in that 750 yards of No 
Man's Land upon which the evening sun was shining with a 
golden haze — when our shells burst over them and the 
trench mortars made a target of them, and our machine- 
guns whipped into their ranks with a scourge of bullets. 

The men fell face forward in large numbers. Others 
came on and fell further from their own lines. Men ran 
quickly, as though to escape from all the bursting shells 
into the Australian lines, flung up their arms, and lay still. 

They were very brave. Quite a number of these German 
soldiers travelled a quarter of a mile over this open ground 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 197 

in spite of the terrific fire concentrated upon it before some 
bit of shell caught them and killed them, or left them lying 
there in agony. 

No German soldier came through alive. Only a few 
men out of the two battalions escaped. Men were standing 
on the parapets of the German line, calling to them, calling 
them back, trying to save something out of this senseless 
slaughter that had been ordered. 

The counter-attack was an utter failure, and one is left 
wondering why the enemy attempted such attacks, pre- 
destined to end in disaster. It is an expensive form of 
reconnaissance to test our strength. 

The German soldiers would have a right to call it murder. 
It seems to show that the enemy's Staff is disorganised, per- 
haps a little demoralised, by the continual bombardment 
which cuts their signal lines and prevents the sending up of 
supports and supplies. 

The Australians are still fighting in a way which wins the 
admiration of their generals and Staff and of all the Army. 
These clean-cut men, so fine in physique and appearance 
that one always turns to look at them in any street of war, 
are not stolid fellows who can stand the test of shell-fire 
without suffering in spirit. 

They are highly strung and sensitive, with a more nervous 
temperament than many of our English soldiers, but they 
have a pride and an heroic quality that keeps them steady, 
and an intelligence in the individual as well as in mass which 
makes them great soldiers. 



7 

August 13 

There have been no sensational advances since the great 
day of July 14, when our men broke through the second 
German line, but hardly a day passed since then without 
some progress being made to get a stronger grip on the high 
ridge which rolls down on the enemy's side from Pozieres 



198 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

and the two Bazentins and High Wood. This fighting has 
been very hard and grim, and the enemy has done his utmost 
to check every yard of our men's advance by continual cur- 
tain-fire, so that to take a trench or two, or to rush over a 
few dozen yards of No Man's Land, has been a perilous 
adventure. 

It is most excellent, therefore, that last night our men 
were able to make a further "shove," as they call it, of 
nearly 400 yards in depth on a front of about a mile. This 
was to the north-west of Pozieres, and at the same time 
ground was gained on the north-west of Bazentin-le-Petit 
closer to the German switch-line between us and Martin- 
puich. 

The men who have been fighting this uphill battle, for 
that is what it is literally and morally, have been showing 
remarkable quahties. It is an alliance between the Aus- 
tralians and old English regiments with new men in them, 
including some of the "Derby recruits." Although the Aus- 
tralians have had the greater share of the fighting round 
Pozieres, being in greater numbers, they are the first to pay 
a tribute to the spirit of the English lads, and their admira- 
tion is returned. An episode which happened a week ago 
shows the way in which they are sharing the struggle. 

I have already written how the men of Kent went for- 
ward on August 4, and took the German line, under the com- 
mand of that fine colonel and jovial captain, whose exploits 
will be remembered. On the right of them were the Sussex 
men — fair-haired fellows from Arundel and Burpham, and 
little old villages lying snug in the South Downs, and quiet 
old market towns like Chichester — Lord! — a world away 
from places like Pozieres. The line of their trenches was 
in touch with the Australians, and as they scrambled over 
the parapets at the time of the attacks these comrades on 
the right shouted out to them, 

"Hullo, boys, what's up? Where are you going?" 

"Oh, just up along," said the Sussex lads, pointing to a 
"hotshop," as they call it where a lot of shells were bursting. 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 199 

"Is that so? You don't say? Gosh! We'll come with 
you." 

It wasn't discipline. The men had no orders to go, as 
far as I can make out, but some of them certainly did go, 
in a friendly way, and joined in the "scrum" up there, where 
it was no joke. 

8 

The story of the Sussex men is very much like that of 
their comrades from Kent which I have told in detail — the 
bombing down the trenches, the searching of the German 
dug-outs, the encounters with Germans who were hiding in 
shell-craters. But some of the episodes have a special char- 
acter, worth telling. 

They show the human nature of the business up there 
beyond Pozieres. After the first rush through the German 
line it became a question of catching Germans in shell-holes, 
which are good places — or good enough — for snipers who 
prefer to go on killing before they die. A Sussex man who 
spoke some German took the risk of going out alone to one 
of these craters and shouted out to the men below : — 

"If you don't surrender at once we shall shoot you." 

Instantly several heads and several pairs of hands ap- 
peared. 

One man came out with his hands full of gifts and, fall- 
ing upon his knees, begged for mercy. He had cleared his 
pockets and his dug-out of little fancy articles like his watch, 
knife, compass, cigarette-case, scissors, silver soap-box and 
pipe-lighter, which he offered humbly as a ransom for his 
life. 

It appeared later that he was in mortal terror of having 
his throat -cut, and he was profoundly grateful when he 
was taken back to a dug-out and given some whisky and 
cigarettes. He then asked leave to tell his friends the glad 
tidings, and when this was allowed he went out with his 
guards and called to the other men. Immediately a number 



200 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

of them came out of their hiding-places and formed a pro- 
cession with their hands up. 

It was against the Sussex men that the Germans used their 
"flammenwerfer," or flame-jets. It is a clumsy form of 
frightfulness, as I guessed when I first saw one of these 
machines. It takes two men to work it, one with the reser- 
voir strapped to his back, the other pumping out the long 
spray of flame, which has a range of twenty-five yards. 
There were eight of these flame-throwers brought against 
the Sussex lads, but before they had done any damage the 
sixteen men who advanced with them were all shot down. 
It is not by "flammenwerfer" that the German counter- 
attacks have any chance of success. 



The advance last night when the Australian troops took 
an important line of rising ground is a further proof that 
the enemy has not by any means consolidated his defensive 
positions so strongly that they make the same kind of bar- 
rier against us as those which had to be forced in the first 
attacks. 

In spite of all his industry in digging he has not been able 
to make any system of trenches and dug-outs to withstand 
Dur shell-fire. As soon as he gets on with a trench our guns 
register upon it and lay it flat. His one protection is in 
artillery retaliation, and however great its destructive power 
it cannot give cover to the German infantry crouching in 
shallow ditches, and having to come up through communi- 
cation trenches ploughed by high explosives. 

They belong to battalions hurriedly gathered from other 
parts of the line and flung in to stop the gap. They are the 
victims of the general disorganisation of the divisions and 
the staffs which have suffered most heavily from our re- 
peated attacks. Behind them, no doubt, the German Head- 
quarters Staff is as cool and deliberate as ever, not allowing 
itself to be scared by these reverses, organising new lines of 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 201 

defence in case of need, shifting its guns, playing the old 
blood-and-iron game with cold, scientific brains that are not 
affected by the losses or the agonies of men, except as they 
have an influence upon the operations. 

For they are highly-trained scientists of war, these Ger- 
man staff officers, and in defeat, as once in victory, they 
will, I fancy, be as cold and as hard as steel, and as inhuman 
as the devil. Therefore it is idle in my opinion to hope for 
a sudden and sensational collapse of the German war-ma- 
chine, or to argue from local weaknesses and symptoms of 
bad staff work a general disorder. 

Nevertheless, there are many signs that the enemy is be- 
ginning to feel a severe strain upon his defensive strength 
and that his men are being put to an ordeal which not even 
all their discipline and their courage can make endurable. 

For men of a certain kind of science are apt to forget that 
there are other things in human nature besides the chem- 
istry of flesh and blood, and that not even the finest soldiers 
can be made to fight well if their spirit is broken by repeated 
losses. 

lO 

August 17 
It is at the two ends of our recent line of attack — on the 
left above Pozieres and on the right around Guillemont — 
that the interest of the present fighting for the moment 
gathers, and in both these districts some progress has been 
made by our infantry during the past day or two. The 
successful advance of the French, northwards from Harde^ 
court towards Angle Wood, and their capture of the ravine 
to the south-west of it helps to strengthen our lines about 
Guillemont, especially as some of our troops advancing from 
the trenches south of Malz Horn Farm, and west of Trones 
Wood, linked hands with our Allies yesterday. 

I have already described in a previous despatch the great 
difficulty of working over the ground about Guillemont and 
the hard time some of our men have had in pushing for- 



202 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

ward to the outskirts of that town. The enemy has con- 
centrated a large number of batteries in the country beyond, 
and near at hand is defending himself from many machine- 
gun emplacements and a maze of newly-dug trenches. 

The operations yesterday in conjunction with the French 
are still in progress and the result at present is indecisive, 
but with both French and British troops closing upon them 
the situation of the garrison in Guillemont is not what sol- 
diers would call "healthy." 

Yesterday morning I was more interested personally in 
the left side of the battle line above Pozieres, as from an 
artillery observation post I was able to get a very clear view 
of our own and the enemy's ground in this district — ground 
which has been won and held by English and Australian 
regiments with a determination and courage which I have 
described several times with some detail. 

There before me on the sky-line was the windmill which 
should be as famous in the history of this war as the Ferry- 
man's House on the Yser Canal or the chateau at Vermelles, 
or the "Tower Bridge" at Loos. Waves of men have 
surged up the slope to it under storms of shell-fire. To 
Australians fighting for the high ridge on which it stands 
above Martinpuich it has been the goal of great endeavour, 
for which many of them have given their lives. The enemy 
defended it as if it were a great treasure house, though 
only an old building of timber and stone against which the 
wind of centuries has blown, turning the great black sails 
which ground the corn of the folk in Pozieres before ever 
a howitzer had been fired in the world or a flying machine 
had come humming over the hill. The windmill is ours now. 
Our line sweeps round it and our shell-fire drops on the 
other side of the slope, barraging the enemy's ways to and 
from Martinpuich. 

But it is only the relic of a millhouse. The timbers have 
been blown to atoms weeks ago. The sails fell in the first 
bombardment, and all that stands now is the stone base in the 
form of a small pyramid as a memorial of great bloodshed. 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 203 



II 

The enemy yesterday was dropping a heavy barrage all 
along our line, which runs south of Mouquet Farm and 
sweeps below the village of Thiepval and its wood. 

On the other side of Thiepval Wood the opposing lines 
run very close together, and here there was not much shell- 
fire, but on the Pozieres side the shell-bursts and smoke- 
clouds were drifting up and down in a steady, regular way. 
Our own guns were busy with Mouquet Farm (called by 
our soldiers "Moo-cow" Farm, or "Muckie" Farm, accord- 
ing to their whim), and, further off, with Courcelette, whose 
tall factory chimney sticks up above the ridge, and now and 
again one of our heavies sent a great shell crashing into 
Thiepval. 

There were no German soldiers to be seen in that village, 
and no sign of human life at all. It is a ghastly-looking 
place, with its stripped trees, like withered limbs, and a 
ruined church above a row of apple trees, which stand a 
little separate from the village. 

Above is a cemetery with broken tomb-stones and shell- 
craters among its graves. Beyond, on a road running north- 
wards, is a tall crucifix with the figure of Christ looking 
down upon all this death. 

In the trenches no man puts his head above the parapet. 
Several times one of our machine-guns spluttered out a burst 
of fire as a warning to the enemy to keep well down. The 
only movement over this village and battlefield was made 
by shells which tore up the earth and sent drifting smoke 
clouds across the ruins. 

The doom of Thiepval is creeping closer, for our men are 
advancing slowly but surely around Mouquet Farm, so that 
it will be hemmed in. The garrison hiding in the dug-outs 
below those broken buildings at which I gazed yesterday 
must be in a state of dreadful apprehension. I should not 
like to live in Thiepval. 



204 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



12 

August 20 

It is quite impossible to understand the progress of our 
advance since July i without being familiar with the ground 
over which this has been made and the local conditions of 
the fighting on our present front. 

In my despatches I have done my best to picture these 
things and to reveal the heroism of our men by describing, 
as realistically as one may without being too brutal to 
newspaper readers, the appalling difficulties they have to 
encounter. Even now many people wonder, I daresay, at the 
various pauses in the victorious progress of our troops, and 
look forward, day by day, to more smashing blows and 
greater strides over the enemy's ground. 

To me the wonder of this battle is that we should have 
got on so far and so fast. When one has seen the network 
of German trenches, their great systems of underground 
galleries — proof against the heaviest of high explosives — 
their machine-gun redoubts, against which, if even only one 
one gun is left, it is sometimes difficult to advance, and the 
power of their artillery able to barrage a strip of ground 
which our men have to cross, it is astounding that our sol- 
diers could have forced the enemy back from stronghold 
after stronghold and gained their way to the high positions 
of the Pozieres ridge. 

Take those men of ours who have won their way through 
a maze of trenches in this last bit of fighting between 
Pozieres and Thiepval. 

They had to force their way between machine-gun posts 
and scramble over ground which is like a billowy sea of 
earth with deep pits at the bottom of each billow, into which 
many of them stumbled and fell. Not good going for an 
attack ! 

Then they had to storm their way down to the enemy's 
underground system of galleries, where large numbers of 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 206 

strong and imwounded Germans were waiting with stores 
of bombs and every kind of weapon. 

It is true that many of these men surrender readily at the 
first rush of our troops, but if those dug-outs are not cleaned 
out at once, and if our men in their eagerness go on, it is 
quite likely, as it has often happened during the past six 
weeks, that the enemy will come up and attack them from 
the rear. 

From one of these holes in the ground which seemed a 
simple little dug-out there came up, on Friday, as I have 
already said, six officers and over 150 men. I saw them all 
to-day, tall fellows with unstained uniforms and a well-fed, 
fresh, and healthy look. 

One of the officers was quite a giant. He was wearing 
a steel casque of the German pattern which is very much 
like a mediaeval helm, and he was laughing and joking with 
his brother officers as he marched at the head of his com- 
pany. If these men had come up behind English assaulting 
parties who had not made sure of the dug-outs first they 
could have put up a very strong fight, and with one machine- 
gun might have done great damage. 

In their underground galleries they had lived snugly and 
safe, sleeping on spring beds, reclining on upholstered chairs, 
in well- furnished rooms so much like those in the upper 
world that they had even false windows draped with lace 
curtains. 

Our men have to fight below ground as well as above 
ground before they are in possession of an enemy position. 

Above ground it is not good for a quick advance. Our 
guns have been bombarding so continuously that although 
the infantry depends utterly upon an effective artillery 
preparation, and not in vain, the effect of all this shell-fire 
impedes their progress when the time comes to cross No 
Man's Land. 

It is just a series of shell-craters like a wide stretch of 
those "trous-de-loup" which used to be dug in the old days 
of warfare behind the "glacis," and have been revived again 



206 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

in this war, which has adopted every device known to fight- 
ing men from the time of Cain onwards. 



13 

When some of the Australians "went over" the other 
night this was their great cause of trouble. They rushed 
forward eagerly, and before they had gone fifty yards most 
of them had fallen into shell-holes deeper than their own 
height. It was pitch dark, except for the white light of the 
German flares rising and falling, and when they scrambled 
up the shelving sides of the craters they were black as ink 
in this illumination and horribly visible to the German 
bombers and machine-gunners, who made the most of their 
opportunity in the time at their disposal. 

I stood by a man to-day who, since July i, has been 
buried alive by shell-bursts upheaving the earth about him 
no fewer than six times. 

He is a young Australian officer, now wounded in the 
back and leg, and he assured me that he did not mind this 
premature burial very much. 

"There is mostly a little air to breathe — enough to keep 
one going for a few minutes — " he said, "but, of course, 
it's unpleasant waiting to be dug-out, if one has the luck. 
Most fellows mind it very much. But it don't affect me in 
that way." 

This is not an uncommon experience. There are a lot of 
men buried in an advance when, as the official despatch says, 
"We made good progress." So that progress is not a soft 
job for soldiers. Then the German is beginning to leave a 
lot of little things behind him, even if he abandons a trench 
in a hurry. This is a new dodge. One invention which 
has come into his fertile imagination is a man trap, which 
he sets outside his parapet or inside a shell-hole on the way 
to it. As soon as one of our soldiers sets foot on to it it 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 207 

closes about his leg with a terrific bite and brings him down 
like a log. 

Another little device in devilry is the "tortoise bomb." 
It looks very much like a tortoise if you happen to see it — 
which you don't, in the dark — and it stands on four little 
legs. They waggle a little, but should it be unwarily touched 
it may detonate the bomb and blow a man to bits. 

There was some heroic fighting on Friday afternoon 
along a road which runs from High Wood to Delville Wood. 
The heroes of this fight were ordered to take this road with 
troops on their left and right, and in spite of the shell-holes 
on the way and heavy machine-gun fire sweeping down on 
them they took the trench all right, going even a little too 
far, in their eagerness. 

Owing to casualties in officers, the sergeants had, in some 
cases, to carry on the command, and they did so with the 
calm courage of old soldiers. The German trench, bat- 
tered by our gun-fire, was full of dead, and littered with 
rifles and equipment. A few of the enemy stayed and 
fought to the death, and others ran away. Three were 
dragged up out of a dug-out and made prisoners. All 
looked good, from a fighting point of view, in this section 
of the trench, and would have been good if the men on the 
left and right had been able to come up. But they were not 
able to do this, and presently from the right and left came 
parties of German bombers, hurling their grenades at our 
men, who hurled back until every one of their bombs was 
gone. 

Then they grubbed about for German bombs, and used 
those until they could find no more. It was time to escape, 
and the way out was through a narrow sap which was also 
a death-trap if the enemy closed about it. 

But the enemy did a strange thing. They came swarming 
up on both sides, and each side took the other for English 
soldiers, and, in the dusk, bombed each other furiously over 
the heads of our men, who slipped away, marvelling at their 
luck in ill-luck. They had five prisoners when they reached 



208 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

their own lines, for they were joined by two other men (in 
addition to the three from the dug-out), one of whom was 
a German hero — tired of heroism — wearing the Iron Cross 
and another decoration. 

So the fighting goes on, and it is the grit of our troops, 
their splendid obstinacy, their refusal to be beaten by shell- 
fire or shell-holes, by machine-guns or tortoise bombs, by 
poison gas or tear shells, by Germans above ground or 
under ground, or dropping high explosives from the sky — 
"the whole blinking bag of tricks," as they would call it, 
which keeps them going always a little bit further. 

Unless one knows the cost of victory one cannot tell the 
greatness of the victors. 



14 

August 23 
We are getting a stronger grip upon the ridge from 
Pozieres to High Wood. Last night the Australians gained 
a little more ground, so that they have pushed out a line 
to the north-east of Mouquet Farm, and the Scottish troops 
to their right have gained another hundred yards of that 
famous switch-line into which I took a walk the day before 
yesterday to see how we held the enemy's last line of de- 
fence on the way to Martinpuich. 

The switch-line exists only as a name, and in reality is 
nothing but a series of shell-craters in which our men have 
to get what cover they can, after chasing out the Germans, 
before digging and strengthening an effective trench. 

But it is the position that counts, and if we can hold it, 
as I am now certain we shall, it puts the enemy at a great 
disadvantage, of which our guns are already making a full 
and terrible use. The enemy's endeavours to counter- 
attack — he made two last night — have broken down under 
our fire with great bloodshed, and now it is not in the least 
likely that he will succeed in wresting back from us any 
of the high ground. 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 209 

The importance of the position is, of course, entirely one 
of observation, apart from the tactical importance of hav- 
ing driven the enemy on to ground beyond his first and 
second systems of trenches and dug-outs, so that he can get 
no strong cover until he retires to a considerable distance. 

It gives us vantage points from which we can observe his 
movements down the slope, rake him with rifle and machine- 
gun fire if he sends out working parties, and turn the guns 
on to him with direct observation of results. 

One of the immediate effects of being on the Pozieres 
ridge was seen yesterday, when our artillery registered 
something like twenty-five direct hits upon some of the 
enemy's batteries. He had a great concentration of guns. 

Acting in connection with our aviators, who are always 
observing from high places, our gunners are punishing the 
enemy in a very frightful way, and the ground above Thiep- 
val and Courcelette, into which I looked for the first time 
at close range from the switch trench, and Martinpuich, 
and the barren ground to the right of it, is swept by our 
shell-fire. 

A very realistic and tragic picture of what is happening 
down there beyond the high ridge is given in a letter written 
on August lo by a German officer of the 133rd Infantry 
Regiment : 

"The relief yesterday," he wrote, "is incredible. The 
route taken — -Ligny — Warlencourt — Pys — Courcelette, on 
the way to the trenches was very dangerous. During the 
first part the thunder of the guns was very disagreeable, 
and the second part was very unsafe. Heavy shells fell 
right and left of the road. Mounted troops, cars, field kitch- 
ens, infantry in column of route, were all enveloped in an 
impenetrable cloud of dust. 

"The last stage consisted of troops in single file crouching 
on the slope beside the road, with shells bursting overhead. 
Close to Courcelette a message arrived : 'Enemy firing gas- 
shells, on with your gas helmets.' It appeared to be an 
error. From Courcelette to our position in the line we 



210 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

relieved across the open. If the enemy had only noticed 
that, what a target he would have had ! 

"Our position was of course quite different to what we 
had been told. Our company alone relieved a whole bat- 
talion. We had been told we were to relieve a company of 
fifty men weakened by casualties. The men we relieved had 
no idea where the enemy was, how far off he was, or if any 
of our troops were in front of us. We got no idea of our 
supposed position until 6 o'clock this evening. 

* 'To-night I am taking my platoon out to form a covering 
party. My men and I are to lie in shell holes in part of 
an old demolished trench of ours. The English are 400 
metres away. The Windmill is over the hill. The hun- 
dreds of dead bodies make the air terrible, and there are flies 
in thousands. About 300 metres from us is a deserted artil- 
lery position. We shall have to look to it to-night not to 
get taken prisoners by the English. We have no dug-outs. 
We dig a hole in the side of a shell hole and lie and get 
rheumatism. We get nothing to eat or drink. . . . The 
ceaseless roar of the guns is driving us mad. Many of the 
men are knocked up. The company commander thinks we 
were breathing gas yesterday, which slowly decomposes the 
blood, and this is an end of one. What a variety of ways 
one can lose one's life in this place! . . . It is getting light. 
I must start on my way back to the front-line trenches." 

From another man in the 3rd battalion of the 124th Regi- 
ment there is a letter which pays a doleful tribute to our 
flying men. 

*T am on sentry duty, and it is a very hard job, for I dare 
not move. Overhead are the English airmen and in front 
of us the English observers with telescopes, and as soon as 
they perceive anything, then twenty-four 'cigars' arrive at 
once, and larger than one cares to see^ — you understand what 
I mean. The country round me looks frightful. Many 
dead bodies belonging to both sides lie around." 

These letters give the other side of the pictures which I 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 211 

have been describing. They show what German hfe is Hke 
below the Pozieres ridge. 

We are drawing very close to Thiepval, and standing 
yesterday on the high ground to the right of the Windmill 
by Pozieres, within 500 yards of Martinpuich, I could see 
how near our lines have been pushed to both these places. 
Thiepval I have seen several times from the western side, but 
yesterday I stood to the south-east of it looking straight 
across the cemetery of Pozieres to the long line of branch- 
less trees and broken roofs where the German garrison 
awaits its certain doom. 

That doom crept a little nearer last evening when some of 
our English troops left their trenches south of the Leipzig 
Redoubt, which was already in our hands, and following in 
the wake of a terrific bombardment on a short line of the 
enemy's position took that section quickly by assault. I saw 
the steady bombardment of the ground hereabouts which 
was continuous throughout the afternoon, but, by bad luck, 
having gone to another part of the line, did not see the 
attack which followed. 

It was a highly organised and grim bit of work, very 
quickly done and with few casualties on our side. As soon 
as the guns had Hfted, after concentrated fire which tore 
up the ground and made an utter chaos of the German line 
of trench, our men followed. They went over in two 
waves, at as rapid a pace as possible over the tumbled 
ground. Then they went through the broken strands of 
barbed wire, and by men watching them from a little dis- 
tance were seen to drop down intO' the enemy's trench. 

After a little while — less than a minute — the result of 
the attack was seen by a number of German soldiers com- 
ing out of the shell-craters with their hands up. A little 
later a large group of soldiers ran out and tried to escape. 
They ran as though the devil were behind them, but there 
was a devilish fate in front of them, for they plunged 
straight into a heavy fire from our guns, and disappeared. 

In less than a c|uarter of an hour the fight was over and 



212 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

men came plodding back along the way for "walking 
wounded," and the Red Cross flag could be seen over there 
in the light of the setting sun. 

The enemy must have suffered heavily. Our guns caught 
them during a relief, which means that there was a double 
garrison, resulting in a double number of killed, wounded, 
and prisoners. Worse still for them, it seems likely that on 
their way up to the lines many of them were caught in the 
heavy barrage we had for some time been flinging across 
their route. 

Among the 200 prisoners taken there is an ex-waiter of 
the Savoy Hotel, who says that he is thoroughly sick of 
the war, like most of his comrades, and that Verdun, from 
which he has just come, is a heaven compared to the battle- 
fields of Picardy. 

Some time after our assault German troops were observed 
to be massing for a counter-attack behind the captured 
position, but these were immediately dispersed by our artil- 
lery, and no attack took place throughout last night. 

The result of the operation is that we now hold a line 
straight above the Leipzig salient and striking across to our 
trenches south of Mouquet Farm, where the Australians 
made an attack yesterday to push further forward towards 
Thiepval. 

15 

The successful advance south of the Leipzig Redoubt was 
due mainly to the gallant work of some Territorial troops 
who attacked a maze of German trenches on Friday evening 
last, carried them by assault, and linked up with the redoubt 
itself, already in our hands immediately below Thiepval, 
getting a closer grip at the throat of the garrison there. 

I have already told how the men captured the great dug- 
out and took nearly 600 prisoners. They were men of the 
Royal Warwicks, who did that great achievement with ex- 
traordinarily slight loss to themselves. One of the most 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 213 

thrilling episodes of the attack was when they were held 
up on the right by a German strong point, from which came 
a stream of machine-gun fire. The men lay down in front 
of it, and held on until our own Lewis guns could get to 
work. Four times a message came over the telephone ask- 
ing whether the "heavies" should shell the place, but the 
colonel was afraid that his men would be hit, and refused 
the offer each time. Then suddenly, when it seemed im- 
possible to stop that deadly squirt of bullets, the German 
machine-gun ceased fire and a white flag fluttered up. 

The colonel of the Warwicks expected to see twenty men 
come out of that bomb-proof hiding-place. To his amaze- 
ment there emerged six officers, and — ^not 150 men (as I 
think I said in my last despatch) but 242 unwounded Ger- 
mans and six "stretcher cases." There were many acts of 
great individual gallantry among the Warwicks, and all 
were splendid under the fine leadership of their officers. 
One sergeant jumped on to the parados of a German trench 
and kept a machine-gun team away from their weapon until 
our bombing party could arrive, thereby saving the lives of 
many Warwickshire lads and helping to secure victory. 

Further along the trench a company officer, held up at a 
"bomb-stop" or barricade, called for a rifle and fired repeat- 
edly with a cool aim at the German machine-gunners on the 
other side, with two men by him, who kept refilHng his 
magazine, and bombers behind him hurling grenades over 
his shoulders. 

16 

Many of the Germans defended themselves stubbornly 
to the death. A sentry standing outside one of the dug- 
outs saw our men approaching, and, turning quickly, 
shouted down the word "England !" to his comrades below. 
One of the Warwicks who was closest to him hurled his 
last bomb at him, and then, seizing the man's rifle, sprang 
on to the parapet ready to shoot the enemy as they came 



214 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

up. They came up in a swarm, with bombs, and there was a 
great conflict which ended only when the last German was 
dead. 

In one dug-out there was in the midst of all this horror a 
comic episode, like that of a clown in tragedy. A curtain 
divided the dug-out, and a Warwickshire man thrust his 
bayonet through it. Suddenly the curtain was drawn on 
one side and a German soldier, yawning loudly and rubbing 
his eyes with the knuckles of one hand, stood there, as 
though to say "What's up?" He had slept heavily through 
the bombardment and attack, and now when he saw the 
English soldiers facing him, believed he was dreaming. 

So the Warwicks took 400 yards of trenches along a 
front of 600 yards and thrust the wedge closer to Thiepval. 
Meanwhile, in the centre of our line of attack, English and 
Scots and Australian troops had been fighting for the Ger- 
man switch-line beyond Bazentin-le-Petit, the newly dug 
trench which the enemy had made feverishly to defend the 
high ridge above Pozieres, but could not hold. They were 
Scottish troops who took the trench opposite Martinpuich, 
so gaining at least part of the ground for which we have 
striven since July i. 

It is not long ago, as the calendar counts time, though a 
lifetime ago for many thousands of men who have fought 
along the road to Martinpuich, since that village with a 
queer name seemed as unattainable as any dream-city. No 
man of ours, except our flying men, had ever seen it, for 
it lies just below the Pozieres ridge, and before the battle 
opened on July i the ridge itself was a high and distant 
barrier defended all the way by great strongholds like Fri- 
court and Mametz and Contalmaison, and by all those woods 
which could be captured, as every soldier knew, only by des- 
perate fighting. 

Now, after the greatest battle in British history — ^a series 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 215 

of battles, rather, In one great and continuous attack — we 
have gained that ridge above Pozieres and the Windmill, 
and, pushing up to this German switch-line, look down the 
slopes beyond. 

There, only 500 yards away across No Man's Land, lies 
Martinpuich, as I saw it myself to-day from our front-line 
trench, surprised that one could see so close into its ruins. 
To my left as I stood out in the open, above the trenches, 
was the windmill for which the Australians have fought — ' 
the conical base of it being all that is left as a memorial of 
the heroism that gained this ground, and behind was 
Pozieres, the desolate, shell-swept ruin which is linked also, 
for ever, with the memory of those boys from the Overseas 
Dominion who gave a treasure of life to take it. 

The way to Martinpuich is truly "The Street of Adven- 
ture" for hundreds of thousands of our men who have 
fought their way over the ground about it since that first 
day of July which was the beginning of the great adventure. 

When I went up it to-day, further than I have ever been 
before, and to our last post upon it, I passed all the places 
which will make chapter-headings in any history of the war 
— the scenes of all the big battles and of all the little des- 
perate conflicts which have been fought along this wing 
from ditch to ditch, in every tiny copse, in every bit of 
broken woodland. It is a road of immortality. Alas ! also 
of great death — as one sees all along the way — past Fricourt 
and Contalmaison, over ground dotted with new-made 
graves, where white wooden crosses stick up above the 
mounds of earth, everywhere. Amidst the torn tree-stumps, 
now very neat in all the upheaval of these fields flung into 
chaos by gun-fire, now clustering thickly about piles of 
broken brickwork which are still called by their old village- 
names are crosses — crosses and graves. 

Many of those graves are the size of one man's bed, but 
others are broad mounds into which many bodies have been 
laid, with taller crosses, to the remembrance of all of them, 
such as that "To the memory of the N.C.O.'s and men of 



216 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the — Border Regiment who fell in action at this spot on 
the 1st of July, 191 6." Many of them are to unknown 
British soldiers who could not be identified, but whose names 
are on the long roll-call of honour. 



18 

On the road to Martinpuich we passed up by Lonely 
Copse — just a few "strafed" trees — and by Lozenge Wood 
and the Dingle and Birch Tree Wood, and Peake Wood, 
and Acid Drop Copse. Do you remember the names ? Men 
fought ferociously to get these places, our artillery regis- 
tered on them, and I saw them in the first days of July under 
tempests of shell-fire. Now they can be found only by a 
few charred sticks, a few black gibbets, standing above 
heaps of ashes and the bones and dust of men. 

Contalmaison, the capital of the woodlands, is on higher 
ground, and is still the target of German bombardments, 
as it was our target when I saw it first. Most of its red- 
brick chateau was standing when I looked into its windows 
one day from an artillery O. Pip and saw one of its towers 
shot away by one of our 15-inch shells, as cleanly as one 
could cut a slice out of a cake. Now all that is left of the 
chateau is a broken wall or two, rose coloured except where 
the bricks are blackened by fire, standing in the midst of 
great shell-craters and solid waves of earth and ash-coloured 
tree-trunks all hurled about. 

A devilish place is Contalmaison now, and when I walked 
through it yesterday the foul horror of it reeked about me. 
In the night the Germans had flung thousands of gas-shells 
into it, and the stench was still prowling about, stealing out 
of crannies and shell-holes with faint, sickly whiffs as 
though from rotten eggs. And the smell of corruption came 
up from all the litter of battle lying there. . . . 

We went beyond Contalmaison, and were glad to leave it, 
for the enemy's shells were bursting over it, and round by 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 217 

Bazentin-Ie-Petit Wood, thinned out by successive storms 
of shell-fire to the mere ghost of a wood, with the light 
striking through its leprous-looking trunks, where many un- 
buried dead lie among the broken trenches. The ground 
rose gradually past Contalmaison Villa, which stood far 
beyond the village itself, as the country house of some 
French gentleman who will never see it again except in dust 
and ashes, and here we were out in the centre of the battle- 
ground, where our men are now fighting between the wind- 
mill of Pozieres and High Wood, on the farthest line of 
our advance. 

The battle was going on, as it goes on all through the 
days and nights, with never-ceasing gun-fire. The infernal 
tumult of it was all around us, and death was everywhere 
for any man whose luck had run out. Lord God in heaven ! 
If a man had any kind of prayer in his soul, or any special 
form of curse for those who made this war, his lips should 
mutter it in a place like this. 

It was into the famous switch trench which has been 
the goal of great endeavour since July 14, when our troops 
broke the German second line, that we went through other 
trenches after the long walk in the open, and looked at last 
into Martinpuich, first below the high ridge. Merely to see 
it was the supreme proof of the greatest achievement in 
arms ever done by British soldiers. To get as far as this, 
to capture the high ground where we now stood, behind 
earth and sandbags, looking down into the valley beyond, 
our men have stormed many strongholds, fought through 
all the ghastly woodlands from Fricourt and Bazentin and 
High Wood, and many have fallen all along the road to 
Martinpuich. 

The village itself is just like any of all those ruins which 
have been smashed to bits in this poor France. There was 
no sign of human life there among the broken buildings. 



218 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

But there was human life, though I could not see it, in the 
500 yards of No Man's Land between our first line and the 
village. 

In the deep shell-craters here, as thick as holes in a sieve, 
there are still some German soldiers living. They have no 
kind of trench, for there is nothing but open ground before 
us for 1,000 yards, now that we have taken the German 
switch-line, but in these holes they hide themselves at night 
and snipe our men by day. They are fellows who have been 
sent out to hold the ground as much as possible before they 
are dead or captured, and their officers never expect to see 
them again. When our guns barrage this stretch of barren 
land they can be seen hopping from one shell-hole to an- 
other, and it is then the turn of our snipers. They brought 
down thirty-five the first day, after taking the switch-line, 
and about as many two days ago. 

More valuable than a German prisoner — for what's the 
value in this war of one man's life? — was the German ma- 
chine-gun brought in a day or two ago from the ground 
outside Martinpuich, where it lay half -buried, but so un- 
damaged that it is now used against the enemy with his own 
cartridge belts. Other queer things have been brought back. 
Two days after the capture of the switch-line our soldiers 
saw two men waving out there in No Man's Land, and get- 
ting their glasses on to them saw that they were wounded 
Englishmen. A party of Scots crawled out and brought 
them in, as during the same day they had carried back a 
number of German wounded lying about in the shell-holes 
close to our own line. 

The real wonder of our men is only to be seen in such 
places as this. On these battlefields, under shell-fire, they 
were working as calmly as though they were building sand 
castles on the English seaside. Behind them lay many of 
their dead. 

I could track my way by the blood that splashed the walls 
of the trenches, to the place where an amateur medico 
patches up the bodies of broken men in a hole in the ground. 



THE HIGH GROUND AT POZIERES 219 



20 

The ground over which I walked with a young Scottish 
officer — who has no emotion at all about such things be- 
cause since he went first into Loos he has lived cheek by 
jowl with death so that any fear he may have had is killed 
by habit — was nothing but one great stretch of shell-craters. 
There was not one yard of ground into which a shell had 
not fallen, over thousands of yards. Some of them were 
small shells making small craters, others were heavy shells 
which had made enormous pits, and the rim of one crater 
met the rim of another, or mingled. And, as we walked, 
the sky above our heads was filled with shells continuing 
this work, flinging up the earth again into new hills and 
hollows. 

From our own batteries far away behind us there came a 
steady bombardment of the German ground just beyond 
us, and the shells passed overhead with that indescribable 
sound which is half a scream and half a sigh, enormous in 
the volume of its noise. But those sounds were comforting 
compared with others, which were coming overhead. They 
were coming from the enemy's side with a savage over- 
whelming roar, which ended in a rending explosion. 

"Eight inch," said the young Scot by my side. "Heavy 
stuff." 

It is surprising what effect an eight-inch shell can have 
in the way of upheaval. But one's sensation is not that of 
surprise when fifty yards away, or less, a mass of field is 
suddenly lifted skyward and a smoke-cloud as large as a 
cathedral stands there strangely solid in the wind. The 
whole field of battle about us was vomiting up these things, 
and it was damnable. 



XXIII 
THE GERMANS' SIDE OF THE SOMME 



I 

August 9 
I HAVE not been across to the enemy's side of the line (ex- 
cept when it has been broken by our guns and men), and I 
have no intention of following the example of a friend of 
mine who deliberately tried to get across to them in search 
of information. But now and again it is possible to get a 
mental glimpse of how the enemy lives and works and 
thinks behind the barbed wire and the ditches and the ma- 
chine-gun redoubts which make up his defensive system. 

I mean the enemy's fighting men, and not all those people 
in Germany who starve on false promises and grow sick 
with hope deferred, and count up the number of their 
dead, and still say, with a resolute pride, "At least — we 
cannot be beaten." 

From talks with prisoners, and explorations of German 
dug-outs, and the reading of captured documents, and many 
days spent (before the battles of the Somme) in our own 
trenches from which through a loophole or a tuft of grass 
I have looked over to the German lines and seen, not often, 
but several times, German soldiers moving about in work- 
ing parties, and German infantry marching down a hillside 
over 2,000 yards away, I have been able to conjure up a 
fair answer to questions which have often come into my 
head : "What are the fellows doing over the way ? What 
are they thinking about and talking about? What does it 
look like behind their lines? And how do their methods 
and their moral differ from our own?" 

220 



THE GERMAN SIDE OF THE SOMME 221 

Since the beginning of our attack on July i I have gained 
some later information about those things, and it seems to 
me interesting to put down a few of the facts, so that people 
at home may know more about the enemy than they seem 
to know. 



There is no doubt at all that as a fighting man the German 
knows his business thoroughly, and performs it with great 
skill, courage, and discipHne. He has had the advantage of 
us in an enormous reserve of highly-trained officers and non- 
commissioned officers, and although the advantage is rapidly 
disappearing, because after two years of war we are getting 
large numbers of the same class of men and he is losing 
and has lost a great mass of them by death and wounds, he 
still has, I imagine, more than enough for his needs. 

Now, and to the end of the war (for he is careful to keep 
his best brains out of danger), he can call upon a great 
store of professional and scientific knowledge to direct the 
machinery of this business of destruction and defence, and 
to organise the lives of his machine-made men. 

In minute detail of organisation, and in a driving industry 
behind it, the German High Command is masterly, and 
there is not a soldier in the Kaiser's armies who is not well- 
equipped (down to the "housewife" full of pins and needles, 
cotton, buttons, and thread, which he carries in his pouch) 
and well-fed, unless our guns do not permit his supplies 
to come up. 

Enormous attention is paid to the moral of the men, by 
organising concerts, religious services, and beer-parties be- 
hind the lines, so that they shall be kept cheerful until they 
die, and the news of the world, as we all know, is specially 
edited for them with that point of view in mind. 

But the German High Command is careful of the lives of 
its men until the day comes when they have to be flung 



THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

ruthlessly forward, in wave after wave, against the guns of 
the Allies. 

Again and again I have described the spaciousness and 
the depth and comfort of the German dug-outs. That is 
part of the system of life-saving, and the divisional com- 
manders set their men to work and keep them at work in a 
way which our men would call slave-driving. 

I have described those at Montauban and Fricourt as I 
saw them immediately after their capture, and after the 
bombardment which crumpled up all the trenches about 
them, but left them, for the most part, solid and untouched. 



At Ovillers they are even more elaborate, some of them 
having six or eight rooms communicating with each other, 
and two separate storeys — rooms as large as fifteen feet by 
thirty feet, furnished with spring beds, carpets, washing 
arrangements with water laid on, electric light, tapestries to 
keep out the draughts, and other luxuries. One of the 
dug-outs at Ovillers has nine entrances, with beds for no 
men, thirty feet below the surface, and with a cook-house 
containing three big boilers. 

But it is not only in the trenches and in places like Ovillers 
that the Germans dig so industriously. Far behind their 
lines, wherever our long-range guns can reach them, they 
have these elaborate subterranean shelters, deeper and 
stronger than most of ours, and with much greater accom- 
modation. It means incessant work in addition to all the 
work which keeps our own soldiers busy night and day. 

But it is work that saves life, and the Germans do not 
begrudge it, and have no special pride in taking risks. That 
is good generalship and good soldiering. But it does not 
save them. Some of our officers are apt to imagine — I con- 
fess it was in my own imagination for a time — that the 
German was so snug in these burrows of his that our bom- 



THE GERMAN SIDE OF THE SOMME 223 

bardments in normal times without infantry attacks to 
follow, did not cause him many casualties. 

The truth is that continuous artillery fire, such as ours has 
been, is frightfully destructive of human life, and that no 
amount of digging will safeguard it. Transports must move 
along the roads. Men must go up communication trenches. 
Working parties must come out into the open. 

During all the month that our artillery has been increas- 
ing its weight of metal and the number of rounds fired, the 
Germans, therefore, have been suffering great losses, and 
the strain upon the nerves and moral of the men has been 
severe. 

This is certain not only from the statements of German 
soldiers brought into our lines, but from new instructions 
issued as late as July i6, which refer to the treatment of 
the great numbers of wounded, and the terrible conditions 
of the present fighting. Significant sentences reveal the 
truth of things behind the German lines, and again the 
organising minds which try to better them, as far as pos- 
sible : 

"As the circumstances of the present fighting do not as a 
rule permit of a dressing station being established near the 
fighting troops, the wounded must at any rate be taken to 
places which are easy to find, easy to describe, and easy to 
recognise. 

"Companies must inform battalions, and battalions regi- 
ments, where the wounded are to be found, and how many 
there are to remove. 

"They can as a rule only be moved at night. The 
stretcher-bearers who come to fetch them generally waste a 
good deal of time in searching for the wounded, and some- 
times do not find them if they are not assisted by the unit 
which has been engaged. 

"The nights are short for carrying out these large evacu- 
ations. 

"I have already reminded units that troops which are 
relieved should carry their wounded with them." That 



224 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

reveals a tragic picture of the enemy's losses. It is empha- 
sised again that many of the wounded are not found, and 
suggestions are made that pieces of canvas dipped in lumi- 
nous paint might be used to indicate the whereabouts of the 
wounded, or white canvas cut into the form of a cross. 

The German mind is busy with the problem of its dead 
also. The enemy goes to great risk and trouble to remove 
the dead from the fields because the living men who follow 
are disheartened and terrified by the sight of so many 
corpses on their way. 

Search parties are sent out under shell-fire to collect them, 
even though many of the searchers may join the dead, and 
the bodies are put into mortuary chambers like one found 
by us the other day at Pozieres. 

It was filled with dead bodies waiting to be taken away on 
a light railway which runs up to the place, but the enemy's 
artillery fired upon this mortuary and set it on fire, as 
though they were more jealous of their dead than of the liv- 
ing who were our prisoners. 



I have said that they keep their best brains out of danger. 
This is true, even when the brains are second-best. It is 
very seldom that any officer over the rank of a captain is 
found in the front-line trenches, and officers of higher rank 
remain well in the background. Lately, during our attack, 
orders have been given that officers and N.C.O.'s command- 
ing companies and platoons should visit their trenches at 
night "so that the men may see or hear their commanders." 
It is all very naive, and reveals that curious lack of humour 
which characterises the German war-lord. 

"The men," say these instructions, "should be instructed 
as to the whereabouts of their commanding officer, and 
know where to go if they feel that they require inspiring 
with courage. To stimulate courage and to foster the 
feeling of confidence and the spirit of resistance these should 



THE GERMAN SIDE OF THE SOMME 225 

be the first duties of an officer in the front line, at all events 
in the present circumstances. Courage rather than tactful 
theory is the essence of a true leader." 

To give their men courage, in hours when these German 
soldiers, who are brave men, might well give way to terror, 
the German chemists have manufactured tabloids which 
drug them with a kind of frenzy. There is no doubt of 
this, which sometimes I have doubted, because many of 
these drugs were found by a friend of mine — the medical 
officer of the Kentish men who helped to take the trenches 
north of Pozieres a few days ago. 

They contained ether and opium in sufficient quantity to 
intoxicate the strongest man. In the German opinion it is 
good stuff before a counter-attack. 

German organisation is remarkably good. It does not 
neglect the spiritual or the physical side of their soldiers. It 
provides them with song-books and prayer-books as well as 
with food and drink. 

It has never revealed a shortage of shells. Its gunners 
are full of science and wonderfully quick to get on to their 
targets when the infantry calls for help by sending up 
signals of distress. 

In all the mechanics of war and in the fine art of keeping 
up the pride of men the German war lords and high officers 
show real genius. But they cannot bring dead men to life 
nor hide the agonies of all their wounded, nor blink the fact 
that British troops have broken their second line, and ham- 
mered them with terrific blows and reached out far with 
long-range guns to destroy them behind their lines. 

They live in many ruins as bad as Ypres — French ruins, 
alas! — and I know that, on the eve of our great attack, all 
instructions were prepared for a general retreat, with every 
detail ready in case our troops should break through on a 
wide front. 

That is a confusion of deep apprehension. It shows that 
they are envisaging defeat and preparing for it — wisely 
enough — in case of need. It is a state of mind not expressed 



226 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

in an Order of the Day issued by the German Emperor a 
few days ago and found on a German officer captured to the 
north of Pbzieres : 

"To the leaders of the troops of the First Army," says 
the Kaiser, "I express from the bottom of my heart my 
deep appreciation and my Imperial gratitude for the splen- 
did achievement in warding off the Anglo-French mass 
attacks of the 30th of July. They have accomplished with 
German faithfulness what I and their country expected 
from them. 

"God help them further. 

(Signed) "Wilhelm I.R." 

Since then the ground to the north of Pozieres has been 
captured, and to-day there has been fierce fighting and fur- 
ther progress made by British troops towards Guillemont. 
God has not helped them it seems. 

Behind the German lines, in spite of the Kaiser's grati- 
tude for the courage of his troops — a courage which we 
must not belittle, for it is great — ^men are thinking gloomily 
and wondering when all the agony of this great war, which 
holds no victory for Germany, will have an ending, after all 
their blood and all their tears. 



XXIV 
THE ATTACK ON THIEPVAL 



I 

August 25 
The doom of Thiepval is near at hand. By a series of 
small, sharp attacks, in short rushes, after enormous shell- 
fire, our troops have forged their way across a tangled web 
of trenches and redoubts until now they are just below the 
row of apple trees which still show a broken stump or two 
below the southern end of the village. They have bitten off 
the nose of the Leipzig salient, and yesterday I saw them 
take the Hindenburg trench and its strong point, which is 
almost the last of the defensive works barring our way to 
the south entrance of the village fortress. 

On the west our trenches have been dug for some time 
through Thiepval Wood, within four hundred yards of this 
place, and on the east they have been pushed forward to 
the left of Mouquet Farm ; so that we have thrown a lasso, 
as it were, around the stronghold on the hill, from which its 
garrison has only one way of escape — ^by way of the Cruci- 
fix, northwards, where our guns will get them. That gar- 
rison is in a death-trap. The German soldiers in Thiepval 
must be praying for the end to come. 

As I stood watching the place yesterday, from a trench 
only a few hundred yards away, it seemed to me astounding 
and terrible that men should still be living there. I could 
see nothing of the village for there is next to nothing left 
of it — nothing at all but heaps of rubbish which were once 
the roofs and walls of houses. But on the sky-line at the top 
of a ridge which slopes up from the Leipzig salient there 

227 



THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

still stand a hundred trees or so, which are all that is left 
of Thiepval. They stood black and gaunt against the blue 
sky, without a leaf on their broken branches, and all charred. 
The brown hummocks of the German trench-lines encircled 
them, with narrow strips of grass, vividly green, between 
these earthworks and below, falling away to our own lines, 
a turmoil of upheaved soil where a maze of trenches had 
been made shapeless by incessant shell-fire. 

All through the afternoon, as all through the morning, 
and the mornings and afternoons of many yesterdays, our 
guns were firing in a steady, leisurely way, one shell every 
minute or two, at the ground marked out by the black tree- 
stumps. They were mostly the shells of our "heavies" firing 
from long range, so that for several seconds one could hear 
the long voyage of each shell, listen to the last fierce rush 
of it over our heads, and then see, before the roar of the 
explosion, a vast volume of smoke and earth vomit up from 
the place between the trees, or just below, the line of trees 
where the enemy's trenches lay. 

A friend of mine, sitting on some sand-bags with his steel 
helmet just below the tops of some tall thistles which gave 
friendly cover in our fore-ground above the parapet, said 
"Beautiful!" every time there was a specially big cloud- 
burst. He is such a hater of war that his soul follows each 
shell of ours with a kind of exultation so that it shall help 
to end it quickly. But I kept thinking of the fellows below 
there, under that shell-fire. 

It was only previous knowledge, explorations in German 
dug-outs, talks with men who have come living out of such 
bombardments, that made me still believe that there were 
men alive in Thiepval, and that before we take the place 
they may fight desperately and keep machine-guns going to 
the last. There was not a human soul to be seen, and the 
earth was being flung up in masses; but underground a 
garrison of German soldiers was sitting in deep cellars, try- 
ing to turn deaf ears to the crashes above them, try- 
ing to hide the terror in their souls, a terror invading all 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL 229 

their courage icily, and looking into the little mirrors of 
long periscopes which showed them the vision of things 
above ground, and the stillness of the British trenches, from 
which at any minute there might come waves of men on a 
new attack. 



With a few others in the trench where I stood I knew 
that our men were to make another bound yesterday after- 
noon, though not the exact time of it. For nearly two hours 
I watched the bombardment, steady and continuous, but not 
an intense fire from all available batteries, and every few 
minutes I looked at my wrist-watch and wondered "Will it 
begin now?" Down below me was the hummocky track 
of our front-line trenches, in which the attacking parties had 
assembled. Only now and again could I see any movement 
there. 

In our own trench some signallers were carrying down a 
new wire, whistling as they worked. A forward observing 
officer was watching the shell-bursts through a telescope 
resting on the parapet and giving messages to a telephone 
operator who sat hunched at the bottom of the trench with 
his instrument. A couple of young officers came along 
jauntily, swearing because "these silly asses" — whoever they 
might be — ^"never tell you where they are." An artillery 
officer came along for a chat, and remarked that it was a 
fine day for a football match. 



It was a day when the beauty of France is like a song in 
one's heart, a day of fleecy clouds in the blue sky, of golden 
sunlight flooding broad fields behind the battle lines, where 
the wheat-sheaves are stacked in neat lines by old men and 
women, who do their sons' work, and of deep, cool shadows 
under the wavy foliage of the woodlands. 



^30 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

Behind us was a ruined village, and German shells were 
falling into the corner of a wood not far away to our left, 
but the panorama of the French countryside beyond the edge 
of the battlefield was full of peace. Above our heads some 
British aeroplanes came flying, and the hum of their engines 
was like big bees buzzing. They flew straight over the Ger- 
man lines, and presently the sky about them was dotted with 
white puffs of shrapnel, and above the noise of the guns 
there was the high "ping!" of the German "Archies," as 
each shell reached up to those soaring wings, but failed to 
bring them down. 

Another officer came along the trench and said "Good 
afternoon ! The show begins in ten minutes." 

The "show" is the name soldiers give to a battle. 

By my watch it was longer than ten minutes before the 
"show" began. The leisurely bombardment continued in the 
same way. Now and again a German "crump" replied, like 
an elaborate German guttural. Then suddenly, as though 
at the tap of a baton, a great orchestra of death crashed 
out. It is absurd to describe it. No words have been 
made for a modern bombardment of this intensity. One 
can only give a feeble, inaccurate notion of what one big 
shell sounds like. 

When hundreds of heavy guns are firing upon one small 
line of ground and shells of the greatest size are rushing 
through the sky in flocks, and bursting in masses, all descrip- 
tion is futile, I can only say that the whole sky was reso- 
nant with waves of noise that were long-drawn, like the deep 
notes of violins, gigantic and terrible in their power of 
sound, and that each vibration ended at last in a thunderous 
crash. Or again it seemed as though the stars had fallen 
out of the sky and were rushing down to Thiepval. 

The violence of this bombardment was as frightful as 
anything I have seen in this war in the way of destructive 
gun-power. The shells tore up the German trenches and 
built up a great wall of smoke along the crest of the ridge, 
and smashed through the trees of Thiepval, until for min- 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL 231 

utes together that place was only to be known by tall pillars 
of black, and white, and brown smoke, which swayed about 
as though in a great wind, and toppled down upon each 
other, and rose again. 



A voice at my elbow, speaking breathlessly, said : "Look ! 
They're away. . . . Oh, splendid fellows !" 

Out of our front line trenches scrambled long lines of 
men. They stood for a moment on the top of the parapet, 
waited for a second or two until all the men had got up into 
their alignment, and then started forward, steadily and in 
wonderful order. Some of the officers turned round, as 
though to see that all their men were there. I saw one of 
them raise his stick, and point towards the ridge. Then he 
ran ahead of his men. They were on low ground — lowest 
on the right, in front of the parapet where I stood, but 
sloping up a little on the left by the Leipzig redoubt. 
Beyond them the ground rose steadily to the ridge on which 
Thiepval stands. Our men had a big climb to make, and a 
long way to go over open country, for four or five hundred 
yards is the very devil of a way to go when it is swept with 
shell fire. 

The enemy was not long in flinging a barrage in the way 
of our men. A rocket went up from his lines as a signal to 
his guns, and perhaps half a minute after our men had 
sprang over the parapet his shells began to fall. But they 
were too late to do any damage there. Our men were out 
and away. Some message seemed to reach the enemy and 
tell him this. He raised his barrage on to ground nearer to 
his own lines, and his heavy crumps fell rapidly, bursting all 
over No Man's Land. Now and again they seemed to fall 
right into the middle of a bunch of our men, in a way 
frightful to see, but when the smoke cleared the group was 
still going forward. On the right of the line one great shell 
burst with an enormous crash, and this time there was no 



THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

doubt that it had caught some of our men. I saw them 
fall in a heap. . . . Perhaps they had flung themselves 
down to avoid the shell splinters. Perhaps not one of them 
had been touched. It is extraordinary how men can avoid 
death like that. 

Nothing checked the advance of the long lines of figures 
going through the smoke ; not all the German barrage, which 
was now very fierce. The men had to cross one of those 
narrow strips of grass land between the earthworks before 
they came to the first line of German trenches, and they 
showed up black and distinct against this green belt when- 
ever the smoke of the shells bursting above them drifted 
away. 

They were not in close formation. They went forward 
after the first few moments of advance, in small parties, 
widely scattered, but keeping the same direction. Some- 
times the parties themselves broke up and separated into 
individual figures, jumping over shell-craters, running first 
to left or right as the shriek of an enemy shell warned them 
of approaching death. I saw then how easy it is to lose all 
sense of direction in an attack like this, and the reason why 
men sometimes go so hopelessly astray. But yesterday it 
was quite marvellous how quickly the men recovered their 
line when they had drifted away in the blinding smoke, and 
how the groups kept in touch with each other, and how 
separate figures, running to catch up, succeeded in joining 
the groups. 



We watched the single figures, following the fortunes of 
each man across the fire-swept slope, hoping with all our 
souls that he would get through and on. Then he would 
pick himself up when he fell face forward. 

For a little while the men were swallowed up in smoke. 
I could see nothing of them, and I had a horrible feeling 
this time none of us would ever see them again. For they 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL 

had walked straight into the infernal fires, and all behind 
them and all in front the shells were bursting and flinging 
up the earth and raising enormous, fantastic clouds. 

It seemed an hour before I saw them again. I suppose it 
was only five or six minutes. The wind drifted the smoke 
away from the Thiepval ridge, and there, clear and distinct 
to the naked eye, were the lines of our men swarming up. 
Some of them were already on the highest ground, stand- 
ing, single figures, black against the sky. They stood there 
a second or two, then jumped down and disappeared. They 
were in the German trenches, close to Thiepval. 

"Magnificent!" said a French officer who was standing 
close to me. "By God ! your men are fine !" 

They were wonderful. The German barrages did not 
stop them. They went through and on as though proof 
against shells. Some men did not go on, and fell on the side 
of the slope, but it seemed to me there were not many of 
them. 

In the centre of the German trenches was a strong point 
or redoubt, with machine-guns. It was one of those deadly 
places that have often checked one of our attacks, and 
cost many brave lives. But I could see that our men were 
all round it. One single figure was an heroic silhouette 
against the blue of the sky. He was bombing the redoubt, 
and as he flung his bombs the attitude of the man was full 
of grace like a Greek disc-thrower. A German shell burst 
close to him and he was engulfed in its upheaval, but 
whether he was killed or not I could not tell. I did not see 
him again. 



Up the slope went the other men, following the first wave, 
and single fellows hurrying after them. In a little while 
they had all disappeared. They were in the enemy's 
trenches, beyond all doubt. 

New sounds of an explosive kind came through all the 



234 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

fury of gun-fire, which had slackened in intensity, but was 
still slashing the air. It was a kind of hard knocking in 
separate strokes, and I knew it was bomb-fire. Our men 
were at work in and about the German dug-outs, and 
there were Germans there who were not surrendering with- 
out a fight. 

One fight took place on the top of the parapet. A man 
came up and stood on the sky-line — whether an English 
soldier or a German it was impossible to see. I think a 
German, for a second after another man came up as though 
chasing him, and the first man turned upon him. They 
both had revolvers and fired, and disappeared. Other men 
were running along the parapets of the German trenches. 
They were ours, and they were flinging bombs as they ran. 
Then a curtain of smoke was wafted in front of them again, 
and they were hidden. 

From our own trenches another wave of men appeared. 
I think it wanted more courage of them even than of the 
first line of assaulting troops to go out over that open 
ground. They had to face the German barrage and to pass 
over a way where many of their comrades were lying. But 
they went on steadily and rapidly, just as the others had 
gone, splitting up into groups, running in short rushes, dis- 
appearing in the smoke of shell-bursts, falling into shell- 
craters, scrambling up, and on again. . . . 

Another wave came still later, making their way to that 
ridge where their comrades were fighting in the enemy's 
trenches. They, too, disappeared into those ditches. 

Only in the ground near to me could I see any sign of life 
now. Here some of our wounded were walking back, and 
the stretcher-bearers were at work. I watched a little proces- 
sion coming very slowly to our trenches with their stretchers 
lifted high. It was a perilous way of escape for wounded 
when the enemy was flinging shells all over the ground and 
there was no safety zone. Somewhere on our right a shell 
had struck a bomb-store or an ammunition dump and a 
volume of smoke, reddish-brown, rose and spread into the 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL 235 

shape of a gigantic query mark. Other fires were burning in 
what had been No Man's Land, and out of an explosion in 
the enemy's trenches there was flung up a black vomit in 
which were human beings, or fragments of them. Over 
the ridge by Thiepval the enemy's barrage was continuous 
on the far side of the slope between our trenches on the 
west and the ground just gained, and the top of the smoke- 
clouds drifted above the sky-line as though from a row of 
factory chimneys. 



Suddenly out of all this curtain of smoke came a crowd 
of figures, leaping and running. They were Germans trying 
to get to our trenches, not in a counter-attack, but to give 
themselves up as prisoners, and to get some cover from, 
their own shell-fire. Terror was in their attitudes, in their 
wild stampede and desperate leaps over the broken ground 
where the shells of their own guns were bursting. One 
great German crump crashed close to them, and I think it 
must have killed some of them. 

Then for more than an hour as I watched other figures 
came back from the high ground towards our old front 
line, sometimes in groups of two or three, sometimes alone. 
They were our lightly wounded men, with here and there a 
German. 

It was with a sense of horrible fascination that I watched 
the adventures of these men, separately. One of them 
would jump down from the sky-line, and come at a quick 
run down the slope. Then suddenly he would stop and 
stand in an indecisive way as though wondering what route 
to take to avoid the clusters of shell-bursts spurting up 
below him. He would decide sometimes on a circuitous 
route, and start running again in a zig-zag way, altering his 
direction sharply when a shell crashed close to him. 

I could see that he was out of breath. He would halt and 
stand as though listening to the tumult about him, then come 



236 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

on very slowly. I wanted to call out to him, to shout, "This 
way, old man! . . . Quick!" But no voice would have 
carried through that world in uproar. Then perhaps he 
would stumble, and fall, and lie as though dead. But pres- 
ently I would see him crawl on his hands and knees, stand 
up and run again. He would reach our line of trenches 
and jump down, or fling himself down. Some cover at 
last, thank God ! So it happened with man after man, and 
each journey was the adventure of a man trying to dodge 
death. It was horrible to see. 

High above the Thiepval ridge there were perpendicular 
streaks of white smoke and light, strangely spectral, like 
tall thin ghosts wrapped in white shrouds and illumined in a 
ghastly way. I think they were the long tails of rockets 
fired as signals to the guns. The German black shrapnel 
and their green "universal" shell was hanging in big puffs 
above the denser pall below, and there was the glint and 
flash of bursting shells stabbing through the wall of smoke. 

Our aeroplanes were right over Thiepval all through the 
battle, circling round in wide steady flights, careless of the 
German anti-aircraft guns, which were firing continuously. 
Two hostile planes came out and our men closed about them, 
and flew to attack, but after a little while the Germans fled 
back in retreat. The only observation the enemy had was 
from two kite balloons, poised well forward, but often lost 
and blinded in all the clouds. 

So I watched, and knew, because our men did not come 
back from those trenches on the Thiepval ridge, that they 
had been successful. It was only the prisoners and the 
lightly wounded who came back. The assaulting parties 
were holding the ground they had captured in spite of all 
the shell-fire that crashed over them. They had tightened 
the iron net round Thiepval, and drawn it closer. 

So at last I went away from the battlefield, back to the 
quiet harvest fields flooded with the golden glow of the 
sinking sun, luckier than the men who had to stay, and 
ashamed of my luck. The enemy was flinging shells at 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL 237 

long range. The harvest fields were not quite so safe as 
they looked. 

There were ugly corners to pass, shell-trap corners, where 
it is not wise to linger to light a cigarette. But hell was 
behind me, up there at Thiepval, where the storm of shell- 
fire still raged, and where, below ground, the German gar- 
rison awaits its inevitable fate. 



August 26 
Following the official communique, I can now say that the 
troops whom I saw advancing so splendidly and steadily 
across a great stretch of No Man's Land to the higher 
ground round Thiepval were men of Wiltshire and Worces- 
tershire. They deserve the honour that has been given them 
by Sir Douglas Haig in his report, because after their great 
assault they had to sustain last night a strong attack by 
Prussian Guardsmen, following a long and fierce bombard- 
ment. The courage of these English lads — among them 
being boys who once followed the plough and worked in the 
orchards of those quiet old counties — did not fail against 
the finest troops of the Kaiser's armies, and that phrase in 
the official communique which records their achievement is 
a fine memorial : 

"The success of our defences is largely due to the steadi- 
ness and determined gallantry of Wiltshire and Worcester- 
shire men, who, in spite of being subjected to a very heavy 
bombardment, steadily maintained their positions, and re- 
pulsed the determined assault of the enemy." 

It seems to me probable that the enemy will make a big 
effort to check our continued advance along the ridge from 
Thiepval to High Wood, and especially to rescue Thiepval 
itself from its impending fate. The position our troops 
have gained by two months' fighting of the most heroic 
kind has put the enemy at a great disadvantage from the 



238 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

point of view of artillery observation, which is all important 
in modern warfare. 

On the ground in front of us now, beyond the Windmill, 
and the switch-line, the German battalions are in an unten- 
able position if our attack is pressed on, until they fall back 
upon what is known as the Flers line, more than 2,000 yards 
behind Martinpuich and High Wood, and meanwhile their 
present line of defence is open to our bombardments, so that 
the enemy's casualties must be very heavy and, as we know, 
the moral of their men in these shell-craters and ruins is 
badly shaken. 

It is obvious that the German Headquarters Staff realises 
the gravity of the position, and is endeavouring to organise 
a method of defence by attack, which will stop or check the 
British advance. They are probably too shrewd to believe 
that this can be done by bringing up fresh troops to replace 
those who have been worn out, and stand with shattered 
nerves beyond the British lines. 

Fresh troops or old troops are food for our guns, greedy 
for them. It is only by guns that the enemy can fight 
against guns, and he is drifting down batteries into a great 
concentration for the defence of Thiepval. 

It will be the greatest duel of artillery ever seen on the 
British front, for as I have seen myself the sweep and fury 
of our own shell-fire in the neighbourhood reaches the most 
astounding intensity. Meanwhile we have in this sector, 
beyond any shadow of doubt or exaggeration, the mastery 
of the air, and that is of supreme advantage to our gunners, 
and to the infantry who are supported by them. 

So far our progress has not been brought to a dead halt, 
and we have made further ground yesterday, by wonderfully 
fine fighting on the part of English and Scots battahons, to 
the north and east of Delville Wood. Our hurricane bom- 
bardment preceding the attack of these troops was coun- 
tered by a heavy barrage from the enemy, but our men 
went forward with an unflinching spirit to a line striking 
across the Flers-Longueval road, and joining on the left — 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL 239 

by a curved salient — our old position south-west of High 
Wood. 

The hardest part of the fighting was on the left of the 
attack, where there was a great deal of machine-gun fire, but 
the enemy's trenches were carried and prisoners were taken 
to the number of ten officers and 214 other ranks. Several 
machine-guns also were brought back after being captured 
by hand-to-hand fighting at the strong points. 



9 

August 28 

I have already described my own visual impressions of 
the great assault made south of Thiepval by men of Wilt- 
shire and Worcestershire, which I watched from a neigh- 
bouring trench. But there are still things to be told about 
this memorable achievement — as fine in its way as anything 
our men have done. The name of Wiltshire will always 
be specially remembered on the ground of the Leipzig- 
salient, which barred the southern way to Thiepval, for they 
were troops of this county who, as far back as July 8, 
captured the butt-end of that stronghold, and, working with 
other county troops on their right, made the next advance, 
on August 22, which preceded the greater attack two days 
later. 

That affair of August 22 was extraordinary fine and 
brief and successful. Twelve minutes after the attacking 
time, the Wilts men had gone across the one hundred yards 
of No Man's Land, captured the enemy's nearest line of 
trenches, and sent down their first batch of twenty prison- 
ers. 

The Wiltshires had only three casualties in getting across 
the open ground, though they afterwards suffered more un- 
der the enemy's shell-fire. Most of the German dug-outs 
were blown in, but there was one big subterranean chamber 
which was not badly damaged, and wanted only a little 
work to make it a place of comfort for the new-comers. As 



240 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

their colonel said to me to-day : "It always gives us great 
pleasure to take lodgings in these German apartments." 

The attack on the Hindenburg trench which I saw on 
August 24 was complicated because the Wiltshires had to 
advance partly across the open — 300 yards of No Man's 
Land, which is no joke — and partly, on their left, through 
a network of trenches climbing the high ground from the 
Leipzig salient to Thiepval. 

It was necessary therefore to organise the attack so that 
those advancing over the open should not arrive at the Hin- 
denburg trench sooner than those worrying their way up 
through the broken earthworks, not at all an easy proposi- 
tion. 

Also before the Hindenburg line could be seized securely 
it would be essential to "kill" a German strong point at a 
junction made in the Hindenburg trench by a communica- 
tion way running up from the Leipzig salient. 

The penalty of not doing so would be certain death to 
many of our men by an enfilade fire of machine-guns. These 
are little details that worry the souls of commanding officers 
and company commanders before they get the men over the 
parapet with thousands of bombs and the supplies of picks, 
shovels, sandbags, Lewis gun "drums," Very lights, and 
other material of war. 

10 

On the day before the last attack on the southern way 
into Thiepval the enemy, who suspected bad things coming, 
tried to thwart our plan by hurling a terrific storm of shell- 
fire all over the Leipzig salient. 

He seems to have brought up new guns for the purpose, 
and his heavy five-point-nines "crumped" the ground in all 
directions. But all this did not stop the Wiltshires and the 
Worcesters, who went on with their own little scheme. 

On Thursday afternoon last, everything went like clock- 
work from the moment that our artillery opened with the 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL 241 

intense bombardment described by me in a former despatch. 

The Worcesters attacked on the right, the Wiltshires on 
the left. Over the parapet they halted a moment, and then 
went forward in a steady and ordered way. I could not 
see the men working up through the trenches on the left 
until they sprang up to the crest of the ridge, but only those 
who went across the open. The last eighty yards was cov- 
ered in the quickest time, and soon after our shell-fire lifted 
off the German trench the Wiltshires and Worcesters were 
in among the enemy. 

But not close together. There was a gap of fifty yards 
between the two parties, and in order to get in touch with 
each other they bombed left and right. It was at this mo- 
ment that a company officer distinguished himself by great 
gallantry. 

There were Prussian Guards in the trench, and they 
fought fiercely, using the gap as a bombing centre. Unless 
routed out this group of men might have spoiled the attack. 
The officer saw the situation in a flash, and was quick to 
get a rifle to his shoulder. He was a dead shot, and shot, 
one after the other, five men who were trying to blow him 
to bits with their hand grenades. 

At the same time a sergeant scrambled up into the open, 
and running along outside the trench flung his bombs at the 
enemy below, "to rattle them," according to the description 
of his commanding officer. Another young soldier fixed his 
Lewis gun over the parapet and fired down into the trenches, 
so that the enemy had to keep quiet until our men were all 
round them. 

The strong point by the Koenigstrasse had been rushed, 
and the Hindenburg trench was ours. 



II 

Sharp and fierce fighting had carried the trenches on the 
left and captured a strong dug-out belonging to the German 



242 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

company commanders. Here also the Prussian Guards 
fought with great courage, firing up from their dug-outs 
and only surrendering under the menace of immediate death. 
One sergeant here on the left walked about in the open with 
a cool courage and shot twelve Germans who were sniping 
from shell-holes. The ground was already strewn with 
their dead, killed by our bombardment, and over this grave- 
yard of unburied men there was bayonet fighting and bomb- 
ing until all the Prussians who remained alive became the 
prisoners of the Wiltshires, 

There were several officers among them wearing the Iron 
Cross, and all the officers and men were tall fellows with 
brand-new equipment which showed that they had just come 
into the trenches. 

Two captured machine-guns were turned against the en- 
emy's line, with their own ammunition ready for use, and 
both the Wiltshires and the Worcesters settled down in the 
new line, badly smashed as usual by our shell-fire, but with 
a lot of useful dug-outs still intact, to hold on under the 
inevitable retaliation of the enemy's guns. 

All through the night there was a steady bombardment, 
but nothing of extraordinary ferocity. It was the usual 
night's "straf" in the neighbourhood of Thiepval, which is 
not really a nice place. 

On the following day — last Friday — ^the hostile shell-fire 
increased. Five-point-nines were joined by eight-inches, 
and, as one of the officers described it, "every durned thing." 
It quickened and strengthened in intensity until towards 
evening it was a hurricane bombardment meaning one obvi- 
ous thing — a counter-attack. Our men were well down in 
the old German dug-outs, grateful to their enemy for dig- 
ging so deep and well, but it became most necessary to warn 
our "heavies" that the Prussians were gathering for a 
smashing assault. 

Runners were sent out to get back through the barrage 
if they had the luck, and several of these brave men tried 
and several failed, dying on the way. But one had more 



THE ATTACKS ON THIEPVAL MS 

than human luck. Owing to the appalling character of the 
ground, "pitted and ploughed as though by a gigantic har- 
row" — it is his officer's phrase — the man lost his sense of 
direction, staggered and stumbled on through the smoke 
and over the shell-craters, and then — amazed — found him- 
self looking over a parapet into a trench full of Germans 
with fixed bayonets. They were crowded there, those tall 
Prussians, awaiting the moment to launch their counter- 
attack. 

The runner turned back. Before him the ground was a 
series of volcanoes, tossed up by German shells and British 
shells. He knew that he had to pass through our barrage 
and the enemy's barrage. The chances against him were 
tremendous. In his own opinion he had no more chance 
than a "snowflake in hell." But he ran back, dodging this 
death, and — came through untouched! 

The "heavies" did at last get the message, and were quick 
to answer it. "In three shakes," said an officer of the Wilt- 
shires, "they were smashing the German lines to glory." 

Those tall Prussians crowding there were caught by this 
storm. Their trench became a ditch-full of mangled bodies. 
Only a thin wave of men came out into open country, and 
of these not many went back. 

The Prussian counter-attack was killed. The Worcesters 
and the Wiltshires held their ground round Thiepval, and 
their losses were paid for heavily by German blood. 



XXV 
THE LAST FIGHTS IN DEVIL'S WOOD 



I 

August 29 
The barren ground of the battlefields was turned into 
swamps this afternoon, when the clouds which had been 
piling up in great black masses suddenly broke after a few 
warning flashes of lightning and a roll of thunder. 

I have been watching the usual artillery bombardment 
over the Pbzieres ridge and Thiepval, spreading eastward to 
the thin fringe of High Wood, faintly pencilled against the 
darkening sky. The guns quickened their pace at about 
three o'clock, and on our right the French artillery was also 
hammering away. Then the storm burst and nature, after 
all, had the best of it, though all the atmospheric effects 
seemed like a magnificent plagiarism of our human chemis- 
try which has filled the sky with darkness and forked light- 
nings, and the earth with high explosives, and the air 
with noise. These thunder-claps ripping the clouds before 
the long ruffle of their drums, and the winking of the light- 
ning behind the black curtains on the hills, and the queer, 
ghastly colours edging fantastically shaped wreaths of 
clouds, were enormously Hke our miniature tempests of 
hate. Nature was at war with itself, and our pop-guns 
seemed silly toys. 

Coming down to earth, and its funny ants, called men, 
there has not been very much activity during the past 
twenty-four hours, beyond the work of the gunners. Be- 
tween Delville Wood and High Wood our troops captured 
a German barricade, and there was some bombing about the 

244 



THE LAST FIGHTS IN DEVIL'S WOOD 245 

shell-craters on the way to Ginchy, all of which gives us 
at last a strong grip all round and beyond that Devil's Wood, 
where our men have fought so often and so hard. 

There seems no doubt about it now, judging from all I 
heard at an officers' mess in a big-sized tent between the 
bombardment and the thunderstorm, where a number of 
young officers told me incidents of the recent fighting there. 



It was on August 24, as I have described already, in a 
brief way, that the big "shove" was made all round this 
beastly wood and out of it on the east side, where the Ger- 
mans still had some strong posts and shell-craters and 
machine-guns. 

The troops engaged were mostly of English regiments, 
with one body of Scots, and they all did splendidly in spite 
of the tragic character of the ground and the intensity of 
the enemy's barrage. Accidents happened now and then. 
At one point of the advance the German wire was uncut, 
and only eight men could get through. They killed eleven 
Germans in the craters beyond them, and stayed there till 
dusk, and came back. 

On the north side of the wood the troops were hammered 
by shell-fire, but "stuck" it out, and went forward marvel- 
lously under the protection of their own shell-fire, while our 
machine-guns kept the enemy's heads down by a stream 
of machine-gun bullets — a million of them — ^which "wa- 
tered" his trenches. 

There was but little hand-fighting here. Many Germans 
were found dead in their muck-heaps which were once 
trenches. Four of them ran forward to surrender so furi- 
ously that they scared one of our men who ran, too, until 
he realised their intention and took them prisoner. An- 
other came running forward and was seized by the throat 



M6 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

by his officer, who was suspicious of his intention in the 
heat of the moment. 

There was also a bull-pup who came over and is now 
enjoying bully-beef. 

Further on the right there was great fighting to thrust the 
enemy out of his last ditch in Delville Wood and to get 
across the ground to the east of it. 

The enemy fought with high courage, and there were 
many bombing duels, in which one of our sergeants caught 
German bombs before they burst and flung them back again 
— which is not an easy trick to learn. A Lewis gun was 
thrust up very quickly to a German post where a machine- 
gun was concealed in a shell-crater and played its hose on 
the team who refused to surrender. Out of one such strong 
point — 3. nest of craters — fifty-four Prussians came up 
with the usual shout of surrender when our bombing parties 
had surrounded them. 

Every man fought with reckless courage. The wounded 
officers carried back on stretchers brought the latest news 
to their brigadier, and said, "We're doing jolly well, sir," 
or explained the difficult bits of work in hand. 

The stretcher-bearers went out through the heaviest fire 
and searched for the wounded with great self-sacrifice. 
One man of the R.A.M.C. was out there, over this frightful 
ground, for twenty hours at a stretch, saving many men, 
untired till the last. 

One queer horror was seen. Some German sentries were 
found tied to posts, and one man stood there without a 
head, which had been blown off by a shell. It seemed some 
awful form of field punishment, perhaps for men who had 
tried to desert. Nearly 400 prisoners were taken altogether 
that day. 

They had fought bravely — once they had the pride of 
Prussians. But now many of them were utterly broken, 
and one officer, when he was questioned, could only wring 
his hands and moan about the awful losses of his com- 
pany. 



THE LAST FIGHTS IN DEVIL'S WOOD 247 

It was fighting which continued the tradition of Devil's 
Wood — where horror and heroism have gone hand in hand. 



Seiptember 2 

The enemy's attempt to recover some of his lost ground 
around Delville Wood has been very costly to him, and has 
only succeeded in two places in forcing our men back a little 
way, in spite of the self-sacrifice of those German soldiers 
who obeyed orders and came across a foul ground through 
the curtain fire of our guns, and fell, as they knew they 
must fall. 

So we go back to Devil's Wood again, and the name of 
its beastliness must be written down once more as a place 
where more dead lie among those who have lain there long, 
and where once more shell-fire is smashing through the 
charred tree-stumps and biting great chunks of wood out of 
sturdy old trunks still standing in this shambles. 

It will be remembered, perhaps, how in the last big fight- 
ing here more than a week ago our men thrust our lines 
out beyond the wood, above the orchard trench of Longueval 
and the sunken road to High Wood, and captured the en- 
emy's last strong point in the north-east corner of the wood, 
and chased the enemy out of a network of trenches zig- 
zagging away from the wood towards Ginchy. Something 
like 400 prisoners were taken then, and in knocking out ma- 
chine-gun posts, in bombing the enemy out of small re- 
doubts, and sweeping across ground pitted with shell-craters 
in which lay stubborn Germans sniping our men as they 
passed, every quality of courage and the fighting spirit was 
shown by our troops engaged. 

It was good to get about beyond the Devil's Wood, and 
our men redug their trenches outside it with a willing in- 
dustry. Then by bad luck the rain came, and heavy clouds 
gathered and broke, slashed by lightning, and flooded the 
battlefields. 

It was hard luck on newly-made trenches and on the 



312 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

8 

September 19 

Some of the most noble fighting qualities in the great bat- 
tle of Friday last were shown by the troops who were re- 
sponsible for the centre of the attack directed against Flers 
and the country immediately to the right of that village. 
Those who were given the task of assaulting Flers itself 
were mostly recruited from the London area. 

They had not seen much fighting before going into the 
great fire of the Somme battle. Their General, who had 
raised and trained them, was sure of them, and had taught 
each man the task expected of him on this great day, so 
that whatever might befall their officers, the men should not 
be mere sheep without a sense of guidance or direction. 

When they formed up in line to the north of Delville 
Wood (with awkward bits of German trench thrust down 
upon their right flank), they had three lines in front of 
them over a distance of about 2,500 yards barring their 
way to Flers. It was a long way and a hard way to go, but 
they leapt forward in solid waves of keen and eager men 
following a short and violent barrage from our heavy guns. 

In a few minutes from the start the first two waves 
dropped into the German switch line running diagonally 
from the real Flers line. They found it choked with Ger- 
man dead, killed by our gun-fire, and among them only a 
poor remnant of living men. The first two waves stayed in 
the trench to hold it. The others swept on, smashed through 
the Flers line, and forged their way over shell-craters under 
machine-gun and shrapnel fire, to the outskirts of Flers, 
which they reached between nine and ten in the morning. 

Some London men were held up by barbed wire pro- 
tecting a hidden trench which had not been previously ob- 
served, and a call was made for one of the Tanks which 
had come rolling up behind. It crawled forward, walking 
over the shell-craters, and smashed the whole length of 
barbed wire in front, firing rapidly upon the enemy's bomb- 



MONSTERS AND MEN 313 

ers in the trench and putting them out of action. This 
enabled the whole Hne to advance into Flers village at the 
tail of another Tank now famous for its adventures in 
Flers, which I have already narrated. 

The victorious troops found but little opposition in the 
village. Curiously enough, it was not strongly defended or 
fortified. There were few of the tunnels and dug-outs 
which make many of these places hard to capture, and the 
enemy was utterly demoralised by the motor monster which 
appeared as a bad dream before them. The enemy flung a 
heavy barrage, but our men had few casualties. 



An attempt was made to reach Guedecourt, and, as I 
have already told, one of our Tanks reached the outskirts of 
that new objective. The infantry attack failed owing to 
massed machine-gun fire, and the men fell back to a new 
line of trenches hastily dug by the enemy before their 
defeat, which now gave us useful cover. This was 2,700 
yards from the starting point at dawn, and was almost a 
record as a continuous advance. 

The enemy rallied and made two counter-attacks, one at 
three o'clock in the afternoon, the other between four and 
five. They were tragic attempts. Some of our machine- 
gunners lay in waiting for them and mowed down these 
rows of men as they came bravely forward. It was such a 
sight as I watched at Falfemont Farm when solid bars of 
tall men crumbled and fell before a scythe of bullets. 

At 6.30 on the following evening our troops made an- 
other attempt to reach Guedecourt in co-operation with the 
men on their right, but they were unable to get the whole 
distance in spite of a most heroic assault after two days of 
heavy fighting. 

The force attacking on the right of Flers on Friday 
morning had similar experiences and more difficulties. They 



XXVI 
THE AUSTRALIANS AT MOUQUET FARM 



I 

September 3 
To-DAY, Sunday, September 3, many of our troops have 
been engaged in hard fightng. 

The main facts of these battles will be told ofHcially be- 
fore what I have to write is published — the capture of 
Guillemont, the advance at least as far as half-way through 
the village of Ginchy, the taking of ground eastwards be- 
yond Moucjuet Farm — and put even as briefly as that it will 
be known by people at home that our men have again gone 
forward in a great attack and fought tremendously. 

Again all this countryside above the Somme has been 
filled with those scenes of war which I have described so 
often since that morning of July i, when we began the great 
attack, pictures of a day of battle, when many troops are 
engaged, and when the power of our artillery is concentrated 
in a tremendous endeavour — stabs of fire from the muzzles 
of many guns, smoke-clouds rising above the ridges of the 
hills and lying dense in the valleys, the bloody trail of the 
walking wounded, groups of prisoners tramping down, am- 
bulance convoys swirling through quiet lanes, bandaged 
men in casualty-clearing stations or sitting in harvest-fields 
behind the lines waiting for the Red Cross trains, guns 
going up, ammunition columns crawling forward, transport, 
mules, motor-cars, field-guns, troops — everywhere the move- 
ment of a great day of war. 

250 



THE AUSTRALIANS AT MOUQUET FARM ^51 



Looking back on to-day's battle pictures two of them rise 
before me now as I write, most vividly. One of them was 
just a smoke picture as I stared down into the boiling 
heart of its cauldron this morning. I was in an artillery 
observation post, from which on ordinary days one may 
see each shell burst above the ruins of Thiepval. and the 
ragged trees of its woods and the broken row of apple-trees, 
and a charred stick or two of Mouquet Farm, and beyond, 
very clearly on the ridge, the conical base of the windmill 
above Pozieres. 

To-day one could see nothing of this. Nothing at all 
but a hurly-burly of smoke, black rising in columns through 
white, white floating through and above black, and all 
moving and writhing. That was where our men were 
fighting. 

That was all the picture of this struggle, just smoke and 
mist. Thousands of shells were bursting there, but one 
could see no separate shell burst; no single human figure 
dodging death or meeting it. So I stood and stared and 
listened. It was like a world in conflict. 

The noise of the guns was tense. The hammer-strokes of 
each explosion met each other stroke, and gave out an enor- 
mous clangour. Dante looking down into Inferno may 
have seen something like this, and would not have heard 
such a noise. It was most like the spirit of war of anything 
I have seen, and I have seen men go forward and fall, and 
watched their single adventures. 

The other picture was more human and less frightful, 
though sad and tragic and wonderful. It Vv^as a field behind 
the battle lines, into which the "walking wounded" first came 
down after their escape from those fires further up. It was 
a harvest-field with rows of neat corn stooks near a wood in 
heavy foliage, in spite of shells which came from time to 
time to break the branches. Some wounded men lay about 



316 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

were not broken. Gaps were made in the ranks, but they 
closed up. The wounded did not call for help, but cheered 
on those who swept past and on, shouting, "Go on, Lily 
Whites!" — which is the old name for the Coldstreamers — 
"Get at 'em, Lily Whites!" 

They went on at a hot pace with their bayonets lowered. 
Out of the crumpled earth — all pits and holes and hillocks, 
torn up by great gun-fire — grey figures rose and fled. They 
were German soldiers terror-stricken by this rushing tide of 
men. 

The Guards went on. Then they were checked by two 
lines of trenches, wired and defended by machine-guns and 
bombers. They came upon them quicker than they ex- 
pected. Some of the officers were puzzled. Could these be 
the trenches marked out for attack — or other unknown 
trenches? Anyhow, they must be taken — and the Guards 
took them by frontal assault full in the face of continual 
blasts of machine-gun bullets. 

There was hard and desperate fighting. The Germans 
defended themselves to the death. They bombed our men 
who attacked them with the bayonet, served their machine- 
guns until they were killed, and would only surrender when 
our men were on top of them. It was a very bloody hour 
or more. By that time the Irish Guards had joined the 
others. All the Guards were together, and together they 
passed the trenches, swinging left inevitably under the 
machine-gun fire which poured upon them from their right, 
but going steadily deeper into the enemy country until they 
were 2,000 yards from their starting place. 

Then it was necessary to call a halt. Many officers and 
men had fallen. To go further would be absolute death. 
The troops on the right had been utterly held up. The 
Guards were "up in the air," with an exposed flank, open to 
all the fire that was flung upon them from the enemy's lines. 
The temptation to go farther was great. The German in- 
fantry was on the run. They were dragging their guns 
away. There was a great panic among the men who had 



MONSTERS AND MEN 317 

been hiding in trenches. But the German machine gunners 
kept to their posts to safeguard a rout, and the Guards had 
gone far enough through their scourging bullets. 

They decided very wisely to hold the line they had gained, 
and to dig in where they stood, and to make forward posts 
with strong points. They had killed a great number of 
Germans and taken 200 prisoners and fought grandly. So, 
now they halted and dug and took cover as best they could 
in shell-craters and broken ground, under fierce fire from 
the enemy's guns. 

The night was a dreadful one for the wounded, and for 
men who did their best for the wounded, trying to be deaf 
to agonising sounds. Many of them had hairbreadth 
escapes from death. One young officer in the Irish Guards 
lay in a shell-hole with two comrades, and then left it for a 
while to cheer up other men lying in surrounding craters. 
When he came back he found his two friends lying dead, 
blown to bits by a shell. 

But in spite of all these bad hours, the Guards kept cool, 
kept their discipline, their courage and their spirit. The 
Germans launched counter-attacks against them, but were 
annihilated. The Guards held their ground, and gained the 
greatest honour for self-sacrificing courage which has ever 
given a special meaning to their name. They took the 
share which all of us knew they would take in the greatest 
of all our battles since the first day of July, and, with other 
regiments, struck a vital blow at the enemy's line of defence. 



254 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



Much more lucky and valuable was the advance made by 
Australian troops upon Mouquet Farm. These men knew 
the ground intimately, and had already penetrated the ruins 
of the farm by a strong patrol, which went in and out some 
days ago, bringing back some prisoners, as I described at 
the time. They were confident that they could do the same 
thing again, though the site of the farm might be difficult 
to hold against hostile fire. Our guns did not fail them this 
morning. 

One of these clean-cut Australian boys with those fine, 
steady, truth-telling eyes which look so straight at one even 
after a nerve-breaking ordeal of fire, told me to-day that the 
bombardment preceding their attack was the greatest thing 
he has ever heard, though he has fought under many of 
them hereabouts. 

"Our shells rushed over us," he said, "with a strange, 
loud ringing noise which pierced one's ear-drums with a 
violent vibration. It was just marvellous." But the en- 
emy's guns were powerful, too, and he replied tremendously 
as soon as our own "lifted" and lengthened their fuses. 

The way across No Man's Land, which was about 200 
yards, I think, was a passage perilous. There was no level 
ground anywhere, not a foot of it. It was all shell-holes. 
Our men fell in and scrambled out and fell in again. Some 
of the holes were full of water and mud, and men plunged 
up to their armpits and were bogged. 

There was nothing in the way of trenches to take. The 
Germans were holding lines of shell-craters. In these deep 
pits they had fixed their machine-guns, and were scattered 
all about in isolated groups, with little stores of bombs, 
and rifles kept dry, somehow. It was extraordinarily diffi- 
cult to attack such a position because there was no definite 
line. 

The Australians found themselves sniped by machine- 



THE AUSTRALIANS AT MOUQUET FARM 255 

gfuns — horrible little spasms of bullets — from unknown 
quarters, to the right and left, even behind them. By the 
time the line of Mouquet Farm was reached the battle was 
broken up into a number of separate encounters between 
small parties of Australians and small parties of Prussians. 

There were bombing duels between one man and another 
over a shell-hole. Prussians sniped Australians and Aus- 
tralians Prussians at short range from the cover of craters. 

But in spite of all this hugger-mugger fighting the Aus- 
tralians pushed forward, and advanced parties went into 
Mouquet Farm and 200 yards beyond it on the other side. 
Mouquet Farm — or "Moo-cow" and "Muckie" Farm, as it 
is variously called — only exists as a name. Of the farm 
buildings there is nothing left but some blackened beams 
no higher than one of the Australian boys. 

The enemy, however, had his usual dug-outs here, tun- 
nelled deep and strongly protected with timbers and cement. 
Into one of these went a group of Australians, ready for a 
fight, and surprised to find the place empty of human life. 
It was quiet there out of the shell-fire, and it was pleasant 
to be in the cool dark room, away from the battle. The men 
searched about and found cigars, which they lit and smoked. 

"Good work !" said a boy. 

As he spoke the words there was a scuttle of feet and 
dark figures appeared in the entrance way. They were 
Germans, and an officer among them said: "Surrender!" 
"Surrender be damned!" shouted the Australians. "Sur- 
render yourselves." 

Bombs were flung on both sides, but other Australians 
came up, and it was the Germans who surrendered. I saw 
one of them to-day, sitting on the grass and smoking a pipe 
among some of his comrades, who lay wounded among the 
men who had helped to capture them. 

Other dug-outs were being searched, and other prisoners 
were taken — how many is still uncertain. But what is 
quite certain is that the Australians have taken ground be- 
yond Mouquet Farm to the east and defeated Germany's 



320 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

almost boyish light in his eyes. He used to be a dyspeptic 
and a "bundle of nerves," so he told me, and did not think 
he could last three months of war. But now, at the begin- 
ning of the third year of war he led his battalion into action, 
went under some of the fiercest fire along the whole battle- 
line with them, and lay side by side with his "boys," as he 
calls them, in a shell-hole which became filled with water by 
violent rainstorms. For three days and nights he lay there 
while the enemy was trying to shell our men to death by his 
monstrous five-point-nines. 

There were London men with him and all around him in 
the same kind of holes — for there were no trenches here — 
and though even the sergeants were shaking with a kind of 
ague, not with cold, but after the nervous strain of enduring 
the incessant shock of high explosives, they "carried on," — ■ 
O splendid phrase! — and not a fellow played the coward, 
though all were very much afraid, as all men are in these 
frightful hours. 

They had been born and bred in London. They had worn 
black coats and "toppers" in the City — all the officers among 
them — and the men had been in warehouses and offices and 
shops down Thames-side and away to Whitehall. They 
had played the gentle game of dominoes in luncheon hours 
over a glass of milk and a Bath bun. They had grown 
nasturtiums in suburban gardens, and their biggest adven- 
ture in life had been the summer manoeuvres of the dear old 
"Terriers." And now — they fought through German 
trenches and lay in shell-holes, and every nerve in their 
brains and bodies was ravaged by the tumult of shell-fire 
about them and by the wounded who lay with them. But 
these Londoners who fight on their nerves were no less 
staunch than men like the Scots and the North Country 
lads, who, as far as I can see, have no nerves at all. 



LONDON PRIDE 321 



There were some strange individual adventures in the 
midst of the general experience of rushing two lines of 
German trenches through a violent barrage and getting for- 
ward to open country, where they dug themselves in. 
Among ten machine-guns which they captured on their way 
up there was one handled by a German gunner who awaited 
his chance to sweep the ranks of the London lads. But he 
did not get it. An officer of the London regiment who was 
carrying a rifle "spotted" the man quickly and killed him 
with a straight shot before he had fired more than a few 
bullets. That rifle-shot saved the lives of many of our men. 

In the second German trench there was a sharp fight, and 
one single combat between one of our officers — ^who hap- 
pens to be a South African — and a great lusty German who 
was a much bigger man than ours. It was a bayonet duel 
as two mediaeval knights might have fought in the old days 
with heavy swords. 

Our officer was already wounded twice. He had a bullet 
through the shoulder, and a damaged jaw. But five times 
he pierced his enemy with the bayonet. It should have been 
enough, but the great German still fought. Both bayonets 
were dropped and the two men closed and wrestled with 
each other, trying to get a grip of the throat. The German 
wrestler, bloody as he was, seemed to keep all his brute 
strength, but he was laid out by a bullet in the neck from a 
sergeant of the Londoners who came to the rescue of the 
officer. Afterwards this easy-going gentleman — from 
South Africa — chatted with his colonel over the body of 
his man as quietly and calmly as though he were in his 
smoking-room at home, and paid no attention whatever to 
his wounds, refusing to go down to the doctor, but going 
forward again with his men. 

Some of the men went too far in their eagerness, away 
into the "blue." No word came back from them. No 



XXVII 
THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 



I 

September 4 
In my despatch yesterday describing the very heavy fight- 
ing at several parts of the line, I was unable to give suffi- 
cient prominence to the greatest success of the day, and one 
of the best achievements since the beginning of the Battle 
of the Somme. 

That we hold Guillemont safely and surely I had the luck 
to see for myself to-day when from neighbouring trenches 
I looked into the ruin of the place — strangely quiet this 
afternoon apart from a few German "crumps" — and saw 
that our men were holding the Sunken Road 500 yards 
further on before they made an attack which has given us 
Wedge Wood and ground to the north of Falfemont Farm. 

Yesterday's attack at midday was wonderfully good. Our 
men went forward steadily in waves after a hurricane fire 
from a great mass of British guns. By some curious chance 
the enemy does not seem to have expected an attack at the 
exact hour it happened. They may have thought that they 
had baulked it by their own bombardment on our lines and 
behind them when they flung over 10,000 gas shells, whose 
poisonous vapour floated over the ground for hours. They 
know now to their cost that they did not thwart the advance 
of our troops. 

The enemy's machine-guns swept the ground with a rush 
of bullets, but our men took cover as much as possible in 
the dips and hollows of the earth — chaotic after long weeks 
of shelling — and came along quite quickly to the outskirts 

258 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 259 

of the ruined village. A quarry there, in the centre of the 
western edge, had been entered and held for a day to two by 
British troops, but it was no longer in our hands, and had 
to be retaken. On the edge of the village also, on the 
western and southern sides, the Germans had built their 
best dug-outs, months ago, before our guns concentrated 
their fire here, so that they had plenty of time to build them 
deep and build them strong, to panel them, and roof them 
with concrete, and to furnish them comfortably, and to 
decorate them with pictures from German newspapers and 
postcards from home. 

Our assaulting troops were in and about those dug-outs 
in the first wave, and halted here to see that no enemies 
should remain in hiding to attack them from the rear. Un- 
derground there was not much fighting. A few proud men 
refused to surrender, or did not surrender quickly enough. 
Most of them gave themselves up easily and gave no trouble 
in being marshalled back, so that something like 600 men 
belonging to the finest German troops are now behind our 
lines — ^out of it for good, and rejoicing in their luck of 
hfe. 

Half an hour afterwards, joined by supporting troops, the 
British line advanced to the Sunken Road, where other Ger- 
man soldiers were captured, and found here a fine defensive 
position all ready for them, after a little work in reorganis- 
ing the shelter. 

From that point a number of men went forward again 
to an attack on Falfemont Farm, but this was too far for 
one day's work, and they were held on the outskirts of the 
wood — poor wood of strafed trees ! — by an immediate coun- 
ter-attack from the Prussian Guard. For one of the rare 
times in this war the Germans faced British bayonets, and 
stood to their ground so stoutly that they were able to main- 
tain their position. 

So the battle ended yesterday with the capture of Guille- 
mont, which was good enough, and our line strongly en- 
trenched along the Sunken Road. 



XXXIII 
THE SPLENDID NEW ZEALANDERS 



I 

September 23 
It was inevitable that after the great battle of September 15 
our line should have ragged edges and run up or down into 
small salients. This was due to the greater progress made 
by different bodies of troops; and to the way in which 
isolated groups of Germans held on very stubbornly to these 
stretches of ground not in the general line of our advance. 

During the past forty-eight hours a good deal has been 
done to clear out these pockets, or wedges, and to straighten 
out the line from Courcelette eastwards. 

This morning our troops did a useful bit of work in such 
a place between Courcelette and Martinpuich, knocking out 
a strong post and taking some prisoners, with whom were 
two officers. Elsewhere strong posts thrust out by us be- 
yond the main trenches have been linked up, so that the line 
now runs in a reasonably even way from the north of 
Courcelette across the Bapaume Road, above Martinpuich, 
and so on to the north of Flers. 

This linking-up and clearing-up work now done to a great 
extent, puts us in a stronger position of defence, to hold 
what we have gained, against any attempts made by the 
enemy in counter-attack. 

He has made many attempts since September 1 5 to drive 
our troops out of the high ground, which is vital to his 
means of observation, and the failure of them has cost 
him a great price in life. 

324 



THE SPLENDID NEW ZEALANDERS 325 



Among the most desperate thrusts, pressed with stubborn 
bravery by bodies of German soldiers, collected hastily and 
flung with but little plan or preliminary organisation against 
our lines, were those directed upon the New Zealanders, 
who repelled them after hard and long conflicts fought out 
for the most part with naked steel. 

In all the fighting since July i there has not been anything 
more fierce or more bloody than these hand-to-hand strug- 
gles on the left of Flers, and the New Zealanders have 
gained a greater name for themselves (it was already a great 
name since Gallipoli) as soldiers who hate to give up what 
they have gained, who will hold on to ground with a grim 
obstinacy against heavy odds, and if they are ordered to 
retreat because of the military situation round them come 
back again with a stern resolve to "get the goods." 

That is not only my reading of the men, and I do not pre- 
tend to know them well, but is the summing-up of an of- 
ficer, not from their own country, who has seen them fight 
during these last few days, and who spoke of them with a 
thrill of admiration in his voice, after watching the stoicism 
with which they endured great shell-fire, the spirit with 
which they attacked after great fatigues and hardships, and 
the rally of men, discouraged for a while by their loss of 
officers, which swept the Germans back into panic-stricken 
flight. 

This struggle covers a week's fighting since September 15, 
when at dawn the New Zealanders advanced in waves to a 
series of positions which would bring them up to the left of 
Flers if they had the luck to get as far. On their right were 
the troops whose capture of Flers village I have already 
described, and on their left other troops attacking High 
Wood and the ground north of it. 

The men of New Zealand went forward with hardly a 
check, to the German switch trench 500 yards from the 



262 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

German counter-attack was organised in exactly the same 
way, by parties of men coming down from Leuze Wood. 
But this was also broken up by our machine-gun lire. 



3 

September 5 

My last despatch describing the capture of Wedge Wood 
and the attack on Falfemont Farm left off like a serial story 
at a moment of exciting uncertainty. It was impossible for 
me to tell whether our men had actually taken possession 
of the farm — that plantation of "strafed" trees to the south 
of Leuze Wood — and the meaning of all that coming and 
going of groups and individuals to the west and north of 
it, after the second German counter-attack had failed. 

Now the tangled web of the plot — not spun by imagina- 
tion but as real as death — is straightened out, and the end 
of another grim little chapter of the war is the capture of 
1,000 yards of the enemy's front, to the depth of 1,500 
yards, in and around Falfemont Farm, which is now held by 
British troops. 

It was great fighting which gained this ground, and the 
men were their own generals. These West Country lads 
were not moved like marionettes pulled by the strings from 
headquarters. It was after the first orders had been given 
a soldiers' battle, and its success was due to young officers 
and N.C.O.'s, and men using their own initiative, finding 
another way round when one had failed, and arranging 
their own tactics in face of the enemy to suit the situation 
of the moment. 

Such a thing has been done very rarely since the first days 
of trench warfare, except in raids over No Man's Land and 
bombing fights in such places as Ovillers and Longueval. 
Here the individual craft of our men gained an important 
position. When the attack on Falfemont Farm was checked 
on the south by wicked machine-gun fire our troops worked 
their way westwards, and joining other bodies of men ad- 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 26S 

vancing from the Sunken Road beyond Guillemont, crept 
round the slope of the ground that goes up to Leuze Wood. 

Half way up, on the outer edge of the spur, were the two 
V-shaped trenches which I saw taken by the first two waves, 
immediately after the capture of Wedge Wood, in the hol- 
low at the bottom of the Sunken Road, and these trenches 
were used also as good cover for men inspired by a great 
idea. 

It was the idea of making a surprise rush into Leuze 
Wood, from its western side, while the enemy's attention 
was directed to the defence of Falfemont Farm, half-way 
down the slopes to the south. 

It was this surprise movement which caused all the con- 
fusion which I saw yesterday among the enemy. 

Splendid work was done by our men after dusk and 
during the night, in spite of a deluge of rain, when the en- 
emy's artillery fired most furiously. By dawn more troops 
had joined those who held the spur and pushed on to the 
north of Falfemont Farm, and others had got close to the 
farm on the south and west by way of Wedge Wood. 

Between the black posts which were once high living trees 
about sixty Germans stayed on in their shell-craters and 
broken dug-outs. When the final British rush came from 
three sides they could do nothing but surrender or die. 
Some of them died, and others lay wounded and uncon- 
scious, but most of them put their hands up, and this after- 
noon I saw some of the wounded Germans from Falfemont 
lying side by side on stretchers with boys from the West 
Country who had been hit in attacking them. 

From first to last it was the work of infantry rather than 
guns, and it was a great and terrible moment when the 
Germans came out in their first counter-attack, in close 
ranks, moving very steadily against our men, in a long, 
black undulating wave over the rise and fall of the ground, 
through the waist-high weeds; and then, again, after this 
first advance had been broken by our machine-gun fire and 
had fallen prone into the tall thistles so that no more of 



264 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

them was to be seen, when another body of big Germans 
came out, crouching for the last rush upon our lines, and 
our men fell back a little, and opened out, so that the ma- 
chine-guns had a clear field upon which to play their hose 
of bullets. 

For a little while at least it was fighting without the 
usual massacre of shell-fire from long-range guns which an- 
nihilate the human element as well as the bodies of men. 
Here at least, in spite of the machine-guns, men looked into 
each other's eyes and were killed advancing in the sight of 
their enemies, which seems to me better and less frightful 
than when men go forward and see nothing and are swal- 
lowed up in a great explosion directed from machines six 
miles away. 

The gun-fire was intense afterwards, and men, and masses 
of men, were swallowed up as usual by its high-explosives, 
but for a couple of hours it was more like old-fashioned 
fighting, damnable enough, God knows, but not so utterly 
inhuman. 



It is not sufficiently realised, I believe, how very im- 
portant has been the gain to us of the last two days of bat- 
tle. The capture of Guillemont and of the ground beyond 
it has given us now the whole of the German second line, 
which we broke in parts on the great day of July 14. 

Since then our men have had an uphill fight all the time, a 
long struggle upwards to seize the high ridge from Pozieres 
eastwards, and to hold it. It has been difficult to take and 
difficult to hold. The cost has not been light. The heroism 
shown on those slopes, in those woods, in the assault on the 
high trenches, has been the most wonderful ever shown by 
British soldiers in continuous endeavour. 

Now we have gained the crest of the ridge, and even if 
our offensive were brought to a dead halt to-day, which it 
will not be, the position of our men for the winter would be 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 265 

enormously superior over that of the enemy on the other 
side of the water-shed. Again, the taking of Guillemont 
and the ground by Ginchy has defended our right flank and 
straightened out an awkward saHent. 

With Ginchy in our hands on one side and Thiepval on 
the other, we should be well placed, and there would be a 
great gain for all the sacrifice our men have made in fighting 
forward so hard, and so far, and with such exalted courage. 



5 

September 5 

The taking of Guillemont, the quick progress to the Sunk- 
en Road beyond, the capture of Falfemont Farm, the 
thrust forward, by great daring, into Leuze Wood, the close 
assault on Ginchy, and the splendid advance of the French 
on our right, have given to this part of the battleline an 
atmosphere of exultation, which our troops have not felt 
so strongly since that day of July 14 when we broke the 
second German line at Longueval. Men are fighting here- 
abouts with a sense of victory which is half the battle. They 
feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have the German on the 
run at last, and that by getting hard on to him, taking all 
risks, they will keep him running. 

The rapid and far progress of the French is helping our 
own men, not only in a military way by "keeping the Boche 
busy," as they put it, but as a moral tonic, showing that the 
German strength of resistance has begun to crack. The 
noise of the French guns is wonderful music to British sol- 
diers going forward to their own part of the battlefields, 
and, by Jove! it is astounding in its uproar, as I heard it 
to-day again on our right, away down to the gates of Pe- 
ronne in a great roll of drum-fire for miles. It is one cease- 
less tattoo of "soizante-quinzes" and of heavier guns, like 
a titanic hammering of anvils in the smithies of the gods or 
devils. 

"Hark at them ! They seem to be getting on with it all 



266 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

right," said an English officer to-day, and listening for a 
moment to the great sweep of the artillery battle — for our 
own guns were firing steadily and tremendously — he added 
that "the enemy is having a really thin time. We are 
getting on top at last." 

It is this sense of "getting on top" that is inspiring our 
men to fight to the last ounce of strength on this right wing 
of our attack, up to Ginchy and beyond Guillemont. It is 
literally as well as morally a desire to get on top, up the 
hill to the crest of the ridge, to the last vantage point of the 
enemy, and it is to push him off and over that high point 
that our men have been fighting uphill with a really pas- 
sionate endeavour. 

They got all round the place a few days ago after hard, 
bloody fighting. They held on under great shell-fire and 
machine-gun fire, and many men took the last hazard in 
trying to force their way into the stronghold where the 
enemy is entrenched and covered with well-placed machine- 
guns. Some of them went in, and stayed in. No message 
has come back from them, but it is quite likely that they are 
still there as a living wedge in the enemy's gates. 

One party, thirty strong, fought their way along a sap 
to the north of the village and established a bombing post 
which they held against all odds. Their rations gave out, 
but they would not go. They had no water, and suffered 
horribly from thirst, but not a man would go. Their am- 
munition was nearly spent, but they waited for new sup- 
plies, if they should have the luck to get them. A sergeant 
came back to the front trench with this tale of stubborn 
courage, and a request for food and water and bombs so 
that the thirty might still "carry on." That is the spirit 
with which our men are fighting, and one marvels at them. 

The enemy has suffered heavily against these assaults, and 
our shell-fire has massacred many of his troops, A German 
officer brought back from the outskirts of Ginchy yesterday 
was asked what casualties he had in his company. He said, 
"Oh, a few, not many." He turned away and tried to de- 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 267 

stroy a scrap of paper in his hand, but was not quick enough. 
It was a message calHng urgently for rescue and saying 
that his men were unable to hold out any longer, as there 
were only twenty of them left out of the full strength of 
his company. 

To-day other British troops have forced their way into 
the stronghold, but as yet it is too soon to know whether 
they can maintain their position. The enemy is fighting 
bravely, but however long his resistance may be, I have no 
doubt that Ginchy will be added to the list of all those 
strongholds which have fallen one after another under our 
repeated assaults. For Ginchy must be ours to give us the 
end of the ridge and to link up the line with Leuze Wood, 
where at present our men are exposed to flanking attacks. 



The difficulty of all this close and open fighting, where 
bodies of British troops press on to the very edge of the 
enemy's ditches, and where bodies of Germans hold bits of 
roadway or bits of trench in isolated positions, is that the 
guns on both sides cannot concentrate a heavy barrage with- 
out killing their own men. In this kind of situation the 
German gunners are ruthless, but sometimes that method 
does not pay. 

In spite of all their skill — for they are good gunners, these 
Germans — they were scared enough to withdraw their field 
batteries to a safer distance before our final attack on Guille- 
mont last Sunday. Some of our officers fighting here told 
me that there were very few "whizz-bangs" about that day, 
and it was all shell fire from heavy long-range guns. 

Before our attack they opened an intense bombardment 
upon Trones Wood. It smashed in steady lines of shells — 
the great "five-point-nines" — right through the wood, and 
was maintained mercilessly for many hours. Some of our 
men behind the front lines had escapes from death which 



268 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

seem like miracles. One young officer I know received an 
invitation to tea at a dug-out a few hundred yards, I reckon, 
from his own hole in the earth where he lay with two com- 
rades. It was a pleasant and friendly idea, that cup of tea, 
but he decided against it when he heard the awful crash 
of shells outside. 

Later a message came that he must go on a matter of 
business. It was his duty to go, and so he went as fast as 
possible. A moment or two after reaching the other dug-out 
there was the tinkle of a telephone bell, and he heard that 
both his comrades had been killed by the direct hit of a 
five-point-nine. He went back with a soldier to see if there 
was any hope for his friends — one of them might be 
wounded only — and as he went a shell exploded a yard or 
two away, the man by his side was killed, and his shoulder 
was splashed with the man's blood, but he was left un- 
scathed. 

Our bombardment before the attack on Guillemont was 
more effective. There were not many Germans here or in 
the Sunken Road, or higher up in the trenches by Ginchy, 
who had miraculous escapes. They were killed in masses. 
A great number of dead were found by our men outside 
Guillemont in the Sunken Road, which was the German 
third line of defence there. They were a frightful sight, 
as many of them were quite naked, all their clothes having 
been stripped off by the blasting force of high explosives. 
Some men, untouched by fragments of shell, were killed by 
the enormous concussion of air or by heart shock, and there 
was one dead man kneeling, and still grasping his rifle with 
fixed bayonet. 

The successful attack on Guillemont was due to the effect 
of our shell-fire on the garrison. When the infantry ad- 
vanced they met with but little hostile machine-gun fire. 
Most of the Germans were dazed and done. They had no 
alertness left in them to bring up their weapons and resist 
the attack. Even many of the dug-outs were blown in. A 
sergeant of one of the companies who came up in support — 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 269 

one of those splendid N.C.O/s to whom the steadiness of 
our troops is largely due — told me to-day that he went into 
one deep dug-out where forty men were lying. Only three 
were alive, and of those two were badly wounded. In other 
dug-outs there were many dead. 

This was in the Sunken Road, where afterwards our men 
"organised" the bank, digging themselves in so as to get 
cover from the heavy barrage flung upon them by the 
German artillery after the capture of the position. A lance- 
corporal was killed here by the side of my sergeant friend, 
who buried him where he fell. And another shell killed six 
men in a heap just as these troops were relieved and went 
back for a little while into the support lines. They, too, 
were buried by another lance-corporal who volunteered to go 
back for the purpose, and went under heavy shell-fire to do 
this last service to good comrades. 

Lord ! how many stories of this kind I have told ! The 
spirit of our men in these hideous places and in these fright- 
ful hours is always the same, indomitable and unbroken by 
the worst ordeals. 

7 

September 9 

The first mention that the Irish troops were fighting at 
Guillemont has been made officially, and it is now possible 
for me to write about them in more detail. Their charge 
through Guillemont last Sunday, with English battalions of 
riflemen on their right, was one of the most astonishing 
feats in the war, almost too fast in its impetuosity. They 
went forward with their pipes playing them on, in a wild 
and irresistible assault. 

If there had been three times the number of enemy 
against them they would not have been checked until they 
had carried the northern part of the ruined waste that was 
once a village. The English troops who fought with them 
tell me that they have never seen anything like the way in 



270 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

which these Irishmen dashed ahead. "It was Hke a human 
avalanche," said one of them. 

The officers cheered their men on as they came alongside. 
One of their commanding officers, following the last across, 
picked up pieces of chalk and threw them after his men, 
shouting good luck to them. They stormed the first, sec- 
ond and third German lines through the upper part of the 
village, sweeping all resistance away, and not stopping to 
take breath. They were men uplifted, out of themselves, 
"fey," as the Scots would call it. 

Death had no terror for them, nor all the dead men who 
lay in their way. After months of dull and dogged fight- 
ing in the trenches, where they were restless in their ditches, 
they were excited at getting out into the open and meeting 
the enemy face to face. It was not good to be a German 
in their way. 

The only fault with this fighting at Guillemont was the 
rapidity of pace, which gave them no time to safeguard 
the ground behind them. But that was a fault due to the 
splendour of their gallantry, and no harm came from it. 
The English riflemen who fought on their right had more 
solidity in their way of going about the business, but they 
were so inspired by the sight of the Irish dash and by the 
sound of the Irish pipes that those who were in support, 
under orders to stand and hold the first German line, could 
liardly be restrained from following on. 

"I nearly blew my teeth out of my head, in whistling 'em 
back," said an English sergeant. But discipline prevailed. 

The whole attack from first to last was a model of effi- 
ciency, organisation and courage. All the qualities that go 
to the making of victory were here, fitting in with each 
other, balancing each other, making a terrific weapon driven 
by a high spirit. The artillery was in perfect union with 
the infantry — the most difficult thing in war — the brigadiers 
and the officers carried out the general plan to the letter, and 
the men — it is impossible to overpraise the men, who were 
wonderful in courage and wonderful in discipline. 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 271 



8 

As far as the English battalions were concerned they were 
recruited since the first phase of the war, but as one of 
their officers — once of the Guards — ^told me yesterday, there 
are no regular soldiers, no soldiers of any army in the 
world, who could have attacked in a finer and more dis- 
ciplined way than these young riflemen, as cold as ice in 
self-control, but on fire with the resolve to win. The first 
rush of Irish on the left went over, as I have said, playing 
their pipes — old songs of victory which could be heard 
through the swish of machine-gun bullets and the crash 
of the German crumps. 

The assaulting troops on the right went more quietly, 
and at the first short halt to wait for the barrage of our 
guns, which was smashing ahead of them, Ht their cigarettes, 
and then went on again with their rifles slung, as though 
marching on a field day. 

"Where's that village we've got to take?" they shouted, 
staring at a choppy sea of shell-craters, where there was 
hardly a stick or a stone. 

I have already described the assault on the first lines, 
where our men found many German dead. But strange 
things happened between the first and second lines. The 
Irish on the left, who had gone so quickly forward in their 
great "hooroosh," had failed to clear up all the dug-outs as 
they went. 

Some of the Germans there climbed out and began snip- 
ing in the rear. It was a dangerous menace, but with quick 
judgment the colonel of an English battalion on the right 
diverted five of his platoons to that direction, and they 
searched all the dug-outs and broke up the enemy's attempt 
to rally. 

One dug-out near the quarry at the central entrance of 
Guillemont was discovered by a young gunner officer, who 
had come down behind the advancing infantry "just to look 



27S THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

round," as he puts it, after he had done his work with some 
sixty pounder plum-pudding bombs from a neighbouring 
position. With him were his corporal and one or two other 
men of the trench-mortar battery. 

In looking round he discovered a slit in the rock, which 
seemed to lead down into an underground chamber, and 
having explored it came down into a deep place where 
twenty German soldiers and one officer were hiding. It was 
a surprise, but he held his revolver ready and said "Hands 
up !" They surrendered quietly, clicking their heels together 
and saluting, after they had been searched for arms, and the 
officer, who was a polite fellow, offered the corporal a valu- 
able gold watch as a souvenir of the occasion. 

That was one little adventure on the edge of things. 
Further forward each man was in the middle of a great 
adventure, gruesome and full of peril. An enveloping 
movement was being made by English troops to the south- 
west of the village, on the choppy ground on which Guille- 
mont once stood, and it was here that most opposition was 
encountered, between two sunken roads. In the second 
sunken road, where the enemy had a row of strong dug-outs, 
the ground was thick with huddled dead. 

But from the dug-outs a large number of living men 
who climbed on to the parapet in front of them maintained 
a fusillade of rifle fire and bombs. In the ground between 
the two sunken roads men climbed halfway out of shell- 
craters and sniped our men as they came forward. At the 
same time machine-gun fire was coming down from Ginchy 
and up from Falfemont Farm. It was difficult ground to 
cover, but our riflemen ignored the bullets and the bombs 
and went straight forward, halting only to fire, and then 
going on again, and firing again, as though on manoeuvres. 

Some Lewis gunners ran forward and played a hose of 
bullets upon the enemy's parapet, so that the men dropped. 
Some of our own men had fallen, too, but the wounded 
crawled into shell-holes to get out of the way, and shouted 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 273 

"Go on, boys !" or just crawled in silently and uncomplain- 
ingly, not asking for help however bad their wounds. 

Then the Germans started running and our men went 
after them. One fellow flung off his pack and chased one 
of them until he had him by the neck. A German officer 
who surrendered threw up his hands and said, "If you run 
like that you'll be in Berlin before we're in England." 
There were 150 dead in one part of the sunken road and 
the dug-outs were crowded. Into one of them a smoke 
bomb was thrown to tease the men out, but they would not 
come. Then a Mills bomb was flung in as a stronger 
argument, but before it exploded it was flung back again. 
After that the Germans retreated through a tunnel and 
ran out at another entrance, where they were taken prisoner. 
Twenty-five of them were put into a shell-crater under 
guard of one little rifleman, who strutted up and down in 
a German helmet with his bayonet high above his head and 
a pride twice as high as his bayonet. 

In one dug-out, as I wrote in my first narrative, there 
were forty-one bodies, of whom only three were alive, and 
those were weeping. All the prisoners, of whom there were 
about 600, were in a pitiful condition, as our artillery fire 
had prevented them from getting any rations for three days. 
Their spirit was broken and they were trembling with fear. 



In our dug-outs further back were three officers, one of 
whom, a young captain, was clearly in command of the 
whole garrison of Guillemont, and afterwards, when we 
passed the prisoners' cage behind the lines, all the men 
sprang up and saluted him with profound respect. He was 
the only man who maintained a proud indifference at the 
moment of capture. He stood very straight and still, as 
though not caring whether he lived or died. The two 
officers with him clung about the necks of our own officers 



274 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

crying for mercy. In another place an officer fell down on 
his knees with his hands in an attitude of prayer and his 
head bowed, and one man pulled out a photograph of his 
wife and children, holding that out as his strongest plea 
for life. Our men had no thought to take their lives. As 
one of the sergeants said to me, "As soon as a man sur- 
renders it's an end of the fight, and I'm sorry for him." 

It was hard for some of our men to be sorry for the 
enemy in those wild moments about the dug-outs, for some 
of them flung bombs until the last yard had been covered by 
our troops, then disappeared into their holes and came up 
further away with an air of innocence and meekness. In 
one or two bad cases of fighting after a sign of surrender 
it was the authority of the British officers which saved the 
lives of German soldiers standing by. 

But on the whole the prisoners were well behaved and 
very glad to get away from the horror of Guillemont, grate- 
ful for being given the chance of life. One sergeant of ours, 
hit in the hip by a piece of shell, captured four men without 
help, and then ordered them to carry him back on a stretcher 
to the dressing station, where he arrived, smoking a cigar- 
ette, with his prisoner stretcher-bearers. 

Words can convey very little of all those scenes in Guille- 
mont — the isolated fights, the storming of dug-outs, the 
searching of prisoners, the crowds of British soldiers mov- 
ing forward to new lines behind our terrific curtain fire, the 
Lewis gunners rushing through with their machine-guns to 
take up positions at advanced points, the supporting and 
consolidating troops coming up behind the assaulting troops, 
starting to dig as soon as the ground had been gained, the 
stretcher-bearers rummaging about among the shell craters 
for stricken men, the walking wounded making their way 
back across the rough ground, dazed, and sometimes falling 
not to rise again, the cheers of men taking the last sunken 
road to the east of Guillemont, where they consolidated a 
defensive position for the night, the wild music of the Irish 
pipers, the crash of German shells, the high whine of Ger- 



THE CAPTURE OF GUILLEMONT 275 

man shrapnel, the long rush of our heavies passing over- 
head to "Lousy" Wood, and, in the midst of all this tumult, 
the quiet dead. 

10 

In quiet heroism, of the sujffering and not of the fighting 
kind, it seems to me that the finest thing was done by a 
wounded man. That at least is the opinion of a command- 
ing officer who met him on his way. His face had been 
terribly smashed by a piece of shell, but he waved back the 
stretcher-bearers with a sign that others needed carrying 
more than he did. Then, a solitary and ghastly figure, he 
walked back to the dressing-station, and laid himself down. 

Of the German garrison of 2,000 men hardly one, if any 
one, escaped. The figure has been accounted for in dead, 
wounded and prisoners. Two German battalions have thus 
been wiped out. Among them were men who wear the 
word "Gibraltar" on their shoulder straps, belonging to the 
famous Hanoverian regiment which fought side by side with 
us on the Rock in the eighteenth century. 

It was after the battle that our men suffered most, for 
during the next forty-eight hours there were violent storms, 
which filled the shell-craters with water so that men were 
up to their shoulders in it. But they had dug magnificently 
before the rain came, under the inspiration of a splendid 
colonel, who cried "Dig, dig, for God's sake! Dig, my 
lads !" knowing that he would save their lives by every foot 
of earth turned up by the German shovels they used for the 
work. In three hours they had dug an eight-foot trench 
in the village. 

So Guillemont was taken and held, not only by great gun- 
fire but by men inspired with some spirit beyond their ordi- 
nary courage, and one day these troops will carry the name 
upon their colours, so that the world may remember. 



XXVIII 
THE IRISH AT GINCHY 



I 

September to 
The capture of Ginchy by the Irish Brigades should be told 
not in journalist's prose but in heroic verse. Poor Ireland 
will weep tears over it, for many of her sons have fallen, but 
there will be pride also in the heart of the Irish people, be- 
cause these men of Munster, Dublin, and Connaught, and of 
all parts of the west and the south, have done such splendid 
things in courage and endurance, adding a very noble epi- 
sode to the history of the Celtic race. 

When they came out of the battle this morning they were 
weary and spent, and they had left many good comrades 
behind them, but the spirit of the war sustaine|d them, and 
they came marching steadily with their heads held high. It 
was one of the most moving things I have ever seen in this 
war. 

A great painter would have found here a subject to thrill 
his soul, that long trail of Irish regiments, horribly reduced 
by their losses, and with but few officers to lead them, com- 
ing across a stretch of barren country strewn with the 
wreckage of two years' bombardment, and crowded with the 
turmoil of the present fighting. 

Behind them arose the black curtain of smoke across the 
battlefields through which there came the enormous noise of 
the unending gun-fire, and around them were some of our 
own batteries hard at work with great hammer-strokes as 
their shells went on their way to the enemy's lines, but ahead 
of them walked one Irish piper playing them home to the 

276 



THE IRISH AT GINCHY 277 

harvest-fields of peace with a lament for those who will 
never come back. 



A brigadier came riding over the fields to meet them. It 
was the first time he had seen them together since the early 
dawn of to-day, when they were still fighting beyond the 
ruins of Ginchy, which they had won by a great assault. 

He stood, a solitary figure by the side of the track down 
which his men came, and there was a great tenderness in the 
eyes of this brigadier as he watched them pass, and called 
out to them words of thanks, and words of good cheer, 
and turned to me now and then to say how splendid they 
had been. 

"Eyes right !" shouted the officers or sergeants who were 
leading their companies, and the general said, "Carry on, 
there," and "Well done — you did gloriously." "Bravo, 
Dublins! . . . You did well, damned well, Munsters, my 
lads!" 

The men's eyes brightened at the sight of him ; and they 
squared up, and grinned under German caps and German 
helmets. 

"Hullo, Greene!" called out the brigadier to a very tall 
fellow tramping in the outside file. "Glad to see you're all 
right. And a big target, too !" 

The music of the Irish pipes went calling down to the 
valley, and I watched the men out of sight with something 
stirring at my heart. Earlier in the morning, before they 
had formed up, I had been among them and had heard many 
stories of great adventure and of great courage, told some- 
times with an Irish humour that finds a whimsicality even 
in the most awful moments, and sometimes with the sad- 
ness of men who mourn for their friends, but wonderfully 
untouched by the fearful strain of it all and with a grim joy 
in their victory. 

Some of them had been in Gallipoli, and one sergeant of 



278 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the Munsters told me that the taking- of Ginchy was the 
"hottest" thing he had seen since the landing on August 21 
at Suvla Bay. There were two men in his regiment who 
had fought all through from Mons, and had escaped from 
the hell of the Dardanelles, but had fallen now, at last, on 
the way up from Guillemont. He and other men of the old 
Regulars spoke of the regiments of the New Army who 
had fought with them to-day. 

"They were just great. The Irish Rifles went through 
like a whirlwind. There was no stopping them. When 
the Germans ran you couldn't see them for dust." 



The story of the Irish Brigades does not begin at Ginchy. 
It begins last Sunday, a week ago, at Guillemont, when 
one brigade, as I have already described in an earlier 
despatch, went through the northern part of that village in 
one fierce assault which would not be checked. After that 
(as well as before) they lay under heavy shell-fire, without 
sleep and without hot food or much water, until the new 
attack, when they were on the right of the assault. 

The brigade on the left, which had the greatest triumph 
yesterday, was lying out in connected shell-craters (the old 
kind of trench, neatly revetted, with strong traverses and 
cosy dug-outs, does not exist in this part of the battle-line). 
For five days they held on stubbornly under ceaseless shell- 
fire. When the hour of "zero" came for the attack they 
were not broken in spirit, as weaker men would have been 
after all this trial, but eager to get out and get on — "to get 
some of their own back." 

The Germans in Ginchy would have had more terror in 
their hearts if they had known the character of the men 
who were about to storm their stronghold. They would 
have prayed to God to save them from the Irish. As it 
was, these German soldiers were not feeling safe. They 



THE IRISH AT GINCHY ^79 

were new men just sent up to the line, and conscious of a 
frightful menace about them. They belonged to the 185th 
Division, the 19th Bavarian Division, and the machine-gun 
company of the 88th Division. They crouched down in a 
network of dug-outs and tunnels under the ruins of the 
village expecting attack, and determined, as we know now, 
to sell their lives dearly. They were brave men. 



The attack began yesterday afternoon shortly before five 
o'clock after a heavy bombardment. The Irish sprang up 
and went forward cheering. They shouted "Go on, Mun- 
sters !" "Go on, Dublins !" and old Celtic cries. "Now then, 
Irish Rifles!" Our shell-fire crept up in front of them. 
They went from the south in four waves in open order, 
with about 50 yards between each wave, and on the left 
the troops reached their first halting place in the village, 
right across the first German trenches and dug-outs, in eight 
minutes after starting time — a distance of 600 yards, which 
is a wonderful record. 

On the right the Irish were checked by three machine- 
guns well placed for very deadly work and sweeping the 
ground with waves of bullets. Many poor fellows dropped. 
Others fell deliberately with their faces to the earth so that 
the bullets might skim above their prone bodies. At the 
same time the Irish officers and men were being sniped by 
German marksmen who had crept out into shell-craters. It 
was a serious situation here unless the machine-guns could 
be "killed." 

A brilliant little piece of tactics was done by the troops 
on the left of the right wing, who swung round and attacked 
the machine-gun position from the west and north, in an 
encircling movement so that the German teams had to run 
out of the loop with their weapons to some broken trenches 
300 yards away, where they again fired until knocked out 



g80 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

by some trench mortars attached to one of the Irish bat- 
taHons. This enabled the right wing to advance and join 
the left, and they then advanced together through the vil- 
lage, with the Irish Rifles remaining to hold the captured 
ground, and the Dublins charging ahead. 

In the centre of the village among all the dug-outs and 
tunnels was the ruin of an old farm in which the enemy had 
another machine-gun which they served with bursts of fire. 
Again our trench mortar men saved the situation. They 
came on with the infantry, and ranged their little engines 
on to the farm, aiming with such skill that the hostile ma- 
chine-gun was put out of action by a short storm of high 
explosives. 

The men were still suffering from snipers and ordinary 
riflemen hidden in all kinds of places in the northern half of 
the village, where there were concreted and tunnelled cham- 
bers with loop-holes level with the ground, through which 
they shot. The Irish were reckless of all this and swept 
over the place fiercely, searching out their enemies. In shell- 
craters and bits of upheaved earth and down in the dug- 
outs there was hand-to-hand fighting of the grimmest kind. 
The Bavarians struggled savagely, using bombs and rifles, 
and fighting even with the bayonet until they were killed 
with the same weapon. 

It was all very quick. Within ten minutes of reaching 
the line half-way through the village the leading Dublins 
had got to the northern end of it and sent out advanced 
parties 200 yards beyond. But there was one menace, 
which might have led to disaster but for quick wit and 
fighting genius. 

The Irish had expected that their left flank would be sup- 
ported by other troops attacking between Ginchy and Del- 
ville Wood, but owing to the difficulty of the ground in 
that neighbourhood and the rapidity of the Irish advance 
this had not been possible, and the victors of Ginchy found 
themselves with an exposed flank to the north-west of the 
village. A young sapper officer from Dublin realised the 



THE IRISH AT GINCHY 281 

situation, and taking command of a body of men dug a 
defensive flank and established strong posts as a protection 
against a counter-attack. The situation on the extreme 
right was for some time equally perilous, as the troops 
engaged in an enterprise on that side had not yet made good 
their ground, and the splendid achievement of the Irish 
Brigade, from a military point of view, is their success — 
quite astoundingly good — of taking a hostile front of 900 
yards to the depth of nearly a mile with no supporting 
troops on either flank. 



4 

From a non-military, untechnlcal, human point of view 
the greatness of the capture of Ginchy is just in the valour 
of those Irish boys who were not cowed by that sight of 
death very close to them and all about them, and who went 
straight on to the winning-posts like Irish racehorses. The 
men who were ordered to stay in the village almost wept 
with rage because they could not join in the next assault. 

"We would have gone on into the blue," said one of them, 
"except for all this confounded diplomacy." Diplomacy is 
a fine word for the simple law of safeguarding the captured 
ground; but you see the spirit which used it. It was the 
same spirit which caused the temporary desertion of three 
Irish servants on the Brigade Staff. One of them left a 
note yesterday morning on his master's table : "As I could 
not be at Guillemont I am going to Ginchy. I hope to be 
back again, so please excuse." 

Fine and wonderful men! There was a Sinn Feiner 
among them, with all the passion of his political creed and 
"a splendid soldier," said one of his officers, who is an 
Englishman. Nationalists and Catholics, Irish to the bone, 
with every tradition of their race in their blood and spirit, 
they fought yesterday and in the dawn of to-day with- 
out any thought of grievance or any memory of hatred, 



THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

except against the enemy whom they call "jerry," instead of 
Fritz. 

In fair fight they were relentless, but they were kind to 
their prisoners. It is queer how hatred and kindness alter- 
nate in these men. One man told me the strangest tale with 
absolute truth, I am sure, because of his fine, steady eyes. 
He captured a big Saxon in a shell-hole the night before the 
attack. The man was wounded in the leg and back, but 
held a revolver, and was not too ill to fight. But he had 
no fight left in him when the Irishman jumped down to him. 

"Are you going to kill me?" he asked, in good English. 

"Sure, no," said the Irishman. "But just put away that 
pistol, won't you?" Then the Irish sergeant undid his own 
field dressing and bound up the man's leg and back (it was 
all under the loud whistling of shells), and said, "Now get 
along with you back to your own lines, for faith I don't 
mean any harm to you." 

So away went the German into Ginchy, and afterwards, 
no doubt, wished he hadn't. 

A tall Irishman, describing the great charge to me, said : 
**The small, little men went over with the greatest pluck, sir, 
so that it was a real pleasure to see. And the Jerry boys 
ran that fast the dust was in their throats, it was." 

*How did you get that Boche cap?" one man asked an- 
other. "Did you kill your man ?" 

"Did I kill him ? . , . I brought down fourteen prisoners 
all by myself, I did, and if you don't believe it, here's my 
receipt for the same." 

He held out a slip of paper, and there sure enough was 
the officer's receipt for the fourteen men. 

One German climbed up a tree during the attack. He had 
a white cap-band and a white ribbon on his shoulder, and 
seemed to be signalling. 

"Now, come down, Jerry," shouted five Irishmen in a 
chorus. "If you don't come down we'll shoot you, we will." 

The man would not come down. 

"And sure we shot him," was the end of the story. 



THE IRISH AT GINCHY 283 

The honours of the day are with the Irish, and these 
gallant men hope — they spoke about it, pleadingly — that 
their losses will be filled up by Irishmen, so that the spirit 
of their regiments may be kept. 



XXIX 
THE COMING OF THE TANKS 



T 

September i6 
Another day of great remembrance has been given to our 
history by British troops, September the Fifteenth, that 
will not quickly pass out of the memory of our people, for 
on that day, which was yesterday, our soldiers broke 
through the enemy's third line of defence and went out into 
open country, and gave staggering blows to that German 
war-machine which for two years, all but two months, 
seemed unbreakably strong against us. 

It was a day of good success, yesterday. It was no longer 
a promise of future victory, dependent upon all the flukes 
and chances of war, with their awful hazards, but, for one 
day at least, not looking further, the real thing. 

Our men had the taste of victory, and it was like a strong 
drug to their hearts, so that they laughed even while blood 
was streaming down their faces, and said : "It's wonder- 
ful!" when they came limping off the battlefields with 
wounds on fire, and said : "We made 'em run like rabbits !" 
when they lay on stretchers and could not move without a 
groan. 

And it was wonderful indeed. For this day of victory 
came after two and a half months of continued and most 
bloody fighting. This new British Army of ours had not 
had an easy walk through after its time of preparation and 
training in the dirty ditches of the old trench warfare. 

The task that was set to our soldiers yesterday would 
have been formidable on the first day of a great ofifensive. 

284 



THE COMING OF THE TANKS 285 

Coming after two and a half months, it was starthng in its 
boldness, and showed that our generals had supreme con- 
fidence in the men, in their own powers of organisation, and 
in the luck of battle that comes to those who have worked 
for it. The enemy believed that our offensive had petered 
out. There is much evidence for that. 

They did not believe it possible that an army of our size 
and strength could carry on the attack at the same fierce 
pace. They cherished the hope that our divisions were 
broken and spent, that our stores of ammunition were giv- 
ing out, and that our men were overtired. 

They still had faith in their own gun-power, the defensive 
strength of a thousand guns against the British front, and 
it was a reasonable faith. They had been digging furiously 
on dark nights to strengthen the third line of defence — the 
famous Flers line, which was, they thought, to be the 
boundary of our advancing tide, and though they were 
anxious, and were counting up frightful losses on the 
Somme, they did not expect this last disaster to them. 

Yesterday I saw their prisoners coming off the battlefields 
in droves, and to-day hundreds of them in the barbed-wire 
cages behind the lines. They were dazed men, filled with 
gloom, and tortured by a great bewilderment. 

*Tt is your victory," said one of their officers, speaking 
to me in French. "It is our defeat. I cannot under- 
stand." 

"Germany is kaput/' said one of their non-commissioned 
officers. He meant that Germany is down — "in the soup," 
as our soldiers would say. It was an exaggeration, for 
Germany has still a lot of fight left in her, but it was the 
belief of her beaten soldiers yesterday. 

Our men were exalted — excited by the smell of victory, 
exaggerating also our own gains gloriously in the belief that 
the "last great smash had been made, and that the end of 
this foul and filthy war is at hand." They "went over" at 
dawn yesterday filled with the spirit of victory, and it was 
half the battle won. 



286 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



Many of them went over, too, in the greatest good- 
humour, laughing as they ran. Like children whose fancy 
has been inflamed by some new toy, they were enormously 
cheered by a new weapon which was to be tried with them 
for the first time — "the heavily armoured car" mentioned 
already in the official bulletin. 

That description is a dull one compared with all the rich 
and rare qualities which belong to these extraordinary ve- 
hicles. The secret of them was kept for months jealously 
and nobly. It was only a few days ago that it was whis- 
pered to me. 

"Like prehistoric monsters. You know, the old Ichthyo- 
saurus," said the officer. 

I told him he was pulling my leg. 

"But it's a fact, man !" 

He breathed hard, and laughed in a queer way at some 
enormous comicality. 

"They eat up houses and put the refuse under their 
bellies. Walk right over 'em!" 

I knew this man was a truthful and simple soul, and yet 
could not believe. 

"They knock down trees like matchsticks," he said, star- 
ing at me with shining eyes. "They go clean through a 
wood !" 

"And anything else?" I asked, enjoying what I thought 
was a new sense of humour. 

"Everything else," he said earnestly. "They take ditches 
like kangaroos. They simply love shell-craters I Laugh at 
'em!" 

It appeared, also, that they were proof against rifle bul- 
lets, machine-gun bullets, bombs, shell-splinters. Just 
shrugged their shoulders and passed on. Nothing but a 
direct hit from a fair-sized shell could do them any harm. 

"But what's the name of these mythical monsters?" I 
asked, not beheving a word of it. 



THE COMING OF THE TANKS 287 

He said "Hush!" 

Other people said "Hush ! . . . Hush !" when the subject 
was alluded to in a remote way. And since then I have 
heard that one name for them is the "Hush-hush." But 
their real name is Tanks. 

For they are real, and I have seen them, and walked 
round them, and got inside their bodies, and looked at their 
mysterious organs, and watched their monstrous move- 
ments. 



I came across a herd of them in a field, and, like the 
countryman who first saw a giraffe, said "Hell !.,..! don't 
believe it." Then I sat down on the grass and laughed 
until the tears came into my eyes. (In war one has a funny 
sense of humour.) For they were monstrously comical, 
like toads of vast size emerging from the primeval slime 
in the twilight of the world's dawn. 

The skipper of one of them introduced me to them. 

"I felt awfully bucked," said the young officer (who is 
about five feet high), "when my beauty ate up her first 
house. But I was sorry for the house, which was quite a 
good one." 

"And how about trees?" I asked. 

"They simply love trees," he answered. 

When our soldiers first saw these strange creatures lollop- 
ing along the roads and over old battlefields, taking trenches 
on the way, they shouted and cheered wildly, and laughed 
for a day afterwards. And yesterday the troops got out of 
their trenches laughing and shouting and cheering again 
because the Tanks had gone on ahead, and were scaring the 
Germans dreadfully, while they moved over the enemy's 
trenches and poured out fire on every side. As I shall 
write later, these motor monsters had strange adventures 
and did very good work, justifying their amazing existence. 



288 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



For several days before the great blow was to be made, 
and while there was heavy fighting in progress at most 
parts of the line — the capture of Guillemont by English and 
Irish troops, the splendid rush of the Irish through Ginchy 
— there was a steady forward movement and concentration 
of all the men and machinery to strike at the Flers line. 

Villages beyond the zone of fire where battalions had been 
resting and where there was the busy life of soldiers in 
their billeting areas suddenly became emptied of all this 
human interest. 

The men had passed on — higher up the roads, and higher 
up where there was a struggling tide of all the traffic of war, 
with supply columns, mule-trains, guns, limber, ambulances, 
and troops from all parts of the Empire, surging, swirling, 
struggling slowly forward through narrow village streets, 
up long winding roads, across trampled and barren fields, 
through the ruins of villages destroyed a year or more ago, 
and out into the country of evil menace which is criss- 
crossed by old trenches and pitted with old shell-craters and 
strewn with the refuse of battles two months back in 
history. 

Here a great army with all its material of war — incredibly 
vast and crowded — lay waiting for the hour when it should 
be hurled to the great hammer-stroke. 

They were masses of men who were there the night before 
the battle hidden in the darkness of the earth, not revealed 
even by the white moonlight except in huddled crowds and 
camps, but as I passed them again a few hours before the 
dawn I thought of the individual and not of the mass, all 
the separate hopes and pulse-beats of these men who were 
going to do a big thing if luck should favour us. 

And out of the darkness I thought I heard the sound of 
laughter rising at the thought of the monstrous "hush-hush." 
Before the dawn the moon was high and clear in a sky 



THE COMING OF THE TANKS 289 

that had hardly any clouds. It shone down upon the fields 
and roads so that the plaster walls of French cottages were 
very white under the black roofs, and rows of tents were 
like little hillocks of snow in the harvest-fields. 

As I looked up a shooting star flashed across the sky, and 
I thought of the old legend of a passing life, and wondered 
why to-night all the stars were not falling. 

Presently dawn came, and some low-lying clouds were 
touched with a warm glow which deepened and spread until 
they were all crimson. It was a red dawn. 

"The promise of victory like the sun of Austerlitz," said 
an officer. 

Before six o'clock, summer-time, all our guns were firing 
steadily, and all the sky, very pale and shimmering in the 
first twilight of the day, was filled with the flashes of guns 
and shell-bursts. Heavy howitzers were eating up shells. 



I went to the right of the line, hoping to see the infantry 
attack to the left of Leuze Wood, as I had watched the 
battle here a week or two ago, and here one of the motor 
monsters was coming across the ground. But as the sun 
rose higher it drew the moisture out of all these shell-craters 
and trenches, and a dense white mist blotted out the ridge 
for an hour or more. French troops who join our line here 
came across country. British soldiers were moving forward 
on the left, silently, with the mist about them. 

Overhead shells went rushing — heavy shells that travelled 
with the noise of trains. Forward batteries were firing rap- 
idly and increasingly, and then sharp staccato knocking was 
clear above the heavy crashes of giant crumps, compared 
by a whimsical mind in this war with "an immortal plumber 
laying down his tools." 

Machine-gun fire rapped out in fierce spasms, and the 
German "Archies" were throwing up shells which burst 



290 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

all about the planes of our airmen, who came like a flock of 
birds over the battlefields, flying low above the mists. 

They did wonderful things yesterday, those British air- 
pilots, risking their lives audaciously in single combats with 
hostile airmen, in encounters against great odds, in bombing 
enemy headquarters and railway stations and kite balloons, 
and troops, and registering or observing all day long for our 
artillery. They were out to destroy the enemy's last means 
of observation, and they began the success of the battle by 
gaining the absolute mastery of the air. 

Thirteen German aeroplanes (since reported by Sir 
Douglas Haig to be fifteen) were brought down, and their 
flying men dared not come across our lines to risk more 
losses. 

On our side it was fighting "all in." There was nothing 
of a killing character within our reach and knowledge which 
we did not use, and we turned the enemy's own worst 
weapons against himself. 

Every material of war made by the home workers in our 
factories by months of toil was called in. 

The men went in with the resolve to break through the 
enemy's third line without counting the cost, to smash down 
any opposition they might meet, and to go forward and 
far until they could get the enemy on the run. 

A body of Scots went up to the battle-lines to the tune of 
"Stop your tickling, Jock," but there was a grim meaning 
in the music, and it was no love-song. 

English soldiers had been practising bayonet exercise 
harder than usual, and with a personal interest beyond the 
discipline. "It's time to finish old Fritz," was the shout of 
one soldier to another. "We want to go home for Christ- 
mas!" 

The men fought yesterday fiercely and ruthlessly. They, 
want to get on to the heels of the enemy, and there were 
moments yesterday when they saw many pairs of heels. 



THE COMING OF TPIE TANKS 291 



6 

The area of our attack extended on the left from the 
ground north of Pozieres to the line recently won to the 
north of Ginchy on the right, and its purpose was, as I 
have said, to break through the third German line below 
Courcelette, Martinpuich, and Lesboeuf, a distance of about 
six miles. Time of attack was shortly after six o'clock 
yesterday morning, and along all the line the troops were 
awaiting the moment to rise, after our artillery had com- 
pleted its first barrage. 

On the left in front of Courcelette there was hard and 
unexpected fighting. As we now know the enemy had pre- 
pared an attack against us, and had massed troops in con- 
siderable force in his front and reserve lines. He sent out 
advanced patrols and bombing parties, while our men were 
waiting to go over, and immediately there was a fierce 
encounter. 

One young brown-eyed fellow told me his own experi- 
ence, and it was like many others. 

"The sergeant in my bay," he said, "suddenly called out 
that he had seen a signal light go up from another point of 
the trenches giving a warning of attack. *We shall have 
the whole lot on us,' he shouted. 'Look out for yourselves, 
lads.' " 

The enemy came over in a rush. Many fell before the 
rifle fire of our men, but others managed to jump into por- 
tions of trench, and bombed their way up several of the 
bays. 

Machine-guns were turned on to them, and there were not 
many left alive. But before the fight had ended a new one 
began, for our jumping-off time had come, and the assault- 
ing troops rose as one man, and taking no notice of what 
had happened swept across their own trenches and the Ger- 
mans who were in them, and went straight across country 
towards Courcelette. 



293 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

They came up immediately against difficult ground and 
fierce machine-gun fire. South-east of Courcelette, beyond 
the shell-craters and bits of broken trench which the men 
had carried easily enough, sweeping the Germans down 
before them, stood the ruins of a sugar factory, which the 
enemy had made into a redoubt, with machine-gun em- 
placements. 

It was one of those deadly places which have cost so many 
lives among our men in other parts of the battle ground 
now in our hands. 



But we had a new engine of war to destroy the place. 
Over our own trenches in the twilight of the dawn one of 
those motor-monsters had lurched up, and now it came 
crawling forward to the rescue, cheered by the assaulting 
troops, who called out words of encouragement to it and 
laughed, so that some men were laughing even when bullets 
caught them in the throat. 

"Creme de Menthe" was the name of this particular crea- 
ture, and it waddled forward right over the old German 
trenches, and went forward very steadily towards the sugar 
factory. 

There was a second of silence from the enemy there. 
Then, suddenly, their machine-gun fire burst out in nervous 
spasms and splashed the sides of "Creme de Menthe." 

But the Tank did not mind. The bullets fell from its 
sides, harmlessly. It advanced upon a broken wall, leaned 
up against it heavily until it fell with a crash of bricks, and 
then rose on to the bricks and passed over them, and walked 
straight into the midst of the factory ruins. 

From its sides came flashes of fire and a hose of bullets, 
and then it trampled around over machine emplacements, 
**having a grand time," as one of the men said with en- 
thusiasm. 

It crushed the machine-guns under its heavy ribs, and 



THE COMING OF THE TANKS 293 

killed machine-gun teams with a deadly fire. The infantry 
followed in and took the place after this good help, and 
then advanced again round the flanks of the monster. 

In spite of the Tank, which did such grand work, the 
assault on Courcelette was hard and costly. Again and 
again the men came under machine-gun fire and rifle fire, for 
the Germans had dug new trenches, called the Fabeckgraben 
and Zollerngraben, which had not been wiped out by our 
artillery, and they fought with great courage and des- 
peration. 

Seventy men who advanced first on a part of these lines 
were swept down. Seventy others who went forward to fill 
their places fell also to a man. But their comrades were not 
disheartened, and at last carried the position in a great wave 
of assault. 

Then they went on to the village. It was like all these 
villages in German hands, tunnelled with a nest of dug-outs, 
and a stronghold hard to take. The British troops entered 
it from the eastern side, fought yard by yard, stubbornly 
resolved to have it. 

The Tank came along and ploughed about, searching for 
German machine-guns, thrusting over bits of wall, nosing 
here and there, and sitting on heaps of ruin while it fired 
down the streets. By 6.30 last evening the village was 
taken. 

The British took 400 prisoners, and when they were 
brought down to Pozieres last night they passed old Creme 
de Menthe, who was going home, and held up their hands 
crying "Gott in Himmel!" and asked how they could fight 
against such monstrous things. 

The taking of Courcelette was a great achievement skil- 
fully planned and carried out with stern and high courage 
by splendid men, and one monster. 



g94 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



B 

On the right of these troops there was a great assault 
upon Martinpuich and High Wood, Here, also, in High 
Wood, the Germans had been ready for an attack, and, 
being forestalled in that, they made a strong counter-attack 
which for a time had some success, driving our men back 
to the southern edge of the wood. 

Our troops had been heavily shelled beforehand, and 
they found the enemy in much stronger force than they 
had expected in that wood of bitter memory. But these 
men of ours — I have met many of them before a year ago — 
fought very gamely. 

Some among them were utterly without experience of 
the Somme kind of fighting and wilted a little before its 
ferocity of fire, but the older men, the "veterans" of a 
year's service or more, cheered them up, kept them steady, 
and led them on. 

They counter-attacked the counter-attack and regained 
their old line, and then to their great joy saw the Tanks 
advancing through High Wood and on each side of it. 

"It was like a fairy tale !" said a Cockney boy. "I can't 
help laughing every time I think of it." 

He laughed then, though he had a broken arm and was 
covered in blood. 

"They broke down trees as if they were matchsticks, and 
went over barricades like elephants. The Boches were thor- 
oughly scared. They came running out of shell-holes and 
trenches, shouting like mad things. 

"Some of them attacked the Tanks and tried to bomb 
them, but it wasn't a bit of good. O Crikey, it was a rare 
treat to see! The biggest joke that ever was! They just 
stamped down the German dug-out as one might a whops 
nest." 

On the left of High Wood was a very fine body of troops 
who had no trenches to lie in but just lay out in shell- 



THE COMING OF THE TANKS 295 

craters under a constant fire of "whizz-bangs," that is to 
say, field-guns firing at short range, which was extremely 
hard to endure. 

"It was cruel," said one of these men, "but we went for- 
ward all right when the time came over the bodies of com- 
rades who were lying in pools of blood, and afterwards the 
enemy had to pay." 



They were co-operating with some troops on their left, 
who went straight for Martinpuich, that village into which 
I stared a week or two ago after a long walk to our front 
line on the crest of the ridge beyond Bazentin, looking at the 
Promised Land. 

These men were superb and went across No Man's Land 
for nearly looo yards in six minutes, racing. They made 
short work with the Germans who tried to snipe them 
from the shell-craters, and only came to a check on the 
outskirts of Martinpuich, where they were received with a 
blast of machine-gun fire. 

It was then the turn of the Tanks. 

Before the dawn two of them had come up out of the 
darkness and lumbered over our front line trenches looking 
towards the enemy as though hungry for breakfast. After- 
wards they came across No Man's Land like enormous toads 
with pains in their stomachs, and nosed at Martinpuich be- 
fore testing the strength of its broken barns and bricks. 

The men cheered them wildly, waving their helmets and 
dancing round them. One company needed cheering up, for 
they had lost two of their officers the night before in a 
patrol adventure, and it was the sergeants who led them 
over. 

Twenty minutes afterwards the first waves were inside 
the first trench of Martinpuich and in advance of them 
waddled a monster. 

The men were held up for some time by the same ma- 



296 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

chine-gun fire which has killed so many of our men, but the 
monsters went on alone, and had astounding adventures. 

They went straight through the shells of broken barns and 
houses, straddled on top of German dug-outs, and fired 
enfilading shots down German trenches. 

From one dug-out came a German colonel with a white, 
frightened face, who held his hands very high in front of 
the Tank, shouting, ''Kamerad! Kamerad!" 

"Well, come inside then," said a voice in the body of the 
beast, and a human hand came forth from a hole opening 
suddenly and grabbed the German officer. 

For the rest of the day the Tank led that unfortunate man 
about on the strangest journey the world has ever seen. 

Another Tank was confronted with one hundred Ger- 
mans, who shouted "Mercy! Mercy!" and at the head of 
this procession led them back as prisoners to our lines. Yet 
another Tank went off to the right of Martinpulch, and was 
so fresh and high-spirited that it went far into the enemy's 
lines, as though on the way to Berlin. 

The men were not so fortunate as the monsters, not being 
proof against machine-gun bullets. The enemy concen- 
trated a very heavy fire upon them, and many fell. One 
boy — a fine, stout-hearted lad who had a keen and spirited 
look in spite of dreadful experience — told me a tale that 
Edgar Allan Poe might have written if he had lived to see 
things worse than anything in his morbid imaginings — one 
of our common tales. 

A German crump killed a lance-corporal by his side and 
burled them both completely. 

"It was just my steel hat that kept the earth from my 
face," said the boy, "and gave me a little handful of air to 
breathe. It was in a wee trench we had dug to get some 
cover. But now I was covered too much. 

"It seemed like an hour I was there, but perhaps no more 
than half that time. I tried to shout, but could not. A 
man walked over my head, but did not know I was there. 

"Presently they saw the lance-corporal's leg sticking out, 



THE COMING OF THE TANKS 297 

and started to pull him. I got my hand out, and waggled 
it, and they started digging for me. It was just time. The 
veins were starting out of my head, and I was nearly gone." 
It was late in the evening before the whole of Martinpuich 
was taken after fierce fighting, and it was the crowning 
triumph of a successful day. 

10 

The troops on the left side of the line did amazingly well, 
and were handled well. They took forty German officers 
and 1430 other ranks. Against them was the 2nd Bavarian 
Corps, whom many of our men had met before at Kemmel 
and the Hohenzollern and Ypres, glad now to pay off old 
scores against them. 

On the right of the troops at Martinpuich the attack was 
swinging up to Flers across a wide stretch of difficult and 
perilous ground strongly defended. 

The enemy was flinging over storms of shrapnel and 
high explosives, and many of our men fell, but the wounded 
shouted on the others, if they were not too badly hit, and 
the others went forward grimly and steadily. 

These soldiers of ours were superb in courage and stoic 
endurance, and pressed forward steadily in broken waves. 
The first news of success came through from an airman's 
wireless, which said : 

"A Tank is walking up the High Street of Flers with the 
British Army cheering behind." 

It was an actual fact. One of the motor-monsters was 
there, enjoying itself thoroughly, and keeping down the 
heads of the enemy. 

It hung out a big piece of paper, on which were the 
words : 

"GREAT HUN DEFEAT. SPECIAL !" 

The aeroplane flew low over its carcase, machine-gunning 
the scared Germans, who fled before the monstrous appari- 



298 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

tion. Later in the day it seemed to have been in need of a 
rest before coming home, and two humans got out of its 
inside and walked back to our Hnes. 

But, by that time, Flers and many prisoners were in our 
hands, and our troops had gone beyond to further fields. 



II 

On the extreme right of our line of attack the fighting 
was hardest and fiercest of all, and is still very confused and 
uncertain to the north of Ginchy and in the direction of 
Guedecourt. In this direction the enemy fought with fine 
courage. Machine-gun fire swept our men from the direc- 
tion of Morval and Combles, and the shell-fire was frightful 
in its violence. 

Nevertheless, the first rush forward was magnificent on 
the part of the troops. They were the Guards. 

"Lots of our men dropped," said one of them, "but we 
didn't look round or bother about anything or see anything 
of what was going on around us. We had orders to push 
on, and we pushed." 

The enemy resisted stoutly along his first line. They 
kept up a severe rifle fire and machine-gun fire until our 
men were right on them, and then fought bayonet to 
bayonet. 

Large numbers of them were killed, and the troops swept 
through to the second line of trenches and took that. 

A third wave passed through them to the third German 
trench, but before they reached this goal the German sol- 
diers came out with their hands up and surrendered. Our 
men went on and on. 

"The Boches ran Hke rabbits before us," said several of 
them. They went too far, these soldiers, in their eagerness. 
One of the colonels stood up on a hillock blowing a hunting 
horn to fetch them back, but they did not hear, and went on 
still further, unsupported by troops on their right. 



THE COMING OF THE TANKS 299 

The officers waved on the men with their revolvers, and 
many fell leading their companies. It was one of the great- 
est charges in history, but drove out too far into the "blue" 
without sufficient co-operation, with troops held up lower 
down by strong points and machine-guns. What the situa- 
tion is there to-night I do not yet know, except that our men 
were fighting on the outskirts of Guedecourt. 



12 

I have no time to tell of all the great drama I have seen — 
the long trails of the walking wounded, marvellously brave, 
wonderfully full of spirits, the long columns of German 
prisoners tramping back from the battlefields, dejected and 
miserable, and other great pictures of war not yet to be 
written. 

The German prisoners were utterly dismayed — bewil- 
dered beyond words. Some of the officers tried to shrug it 
off as "a stroke of luck," but others admitted that we had 
surprised them by a great and brilliant stroke. 

One of them with whom I spoke was a young artillery 
officer who had fought against us at Ypres in 19 14, and 
afterwards against the Russians. 

"The Somme is the worst of all for us," he said. "It is 
fearful." 

Several German officers were appalling figures, in masks 
of horror, their faces as black as negroes. They had been 
in a dug-out blown up by one of our bombs, and it was full 
of Very lights, which flamed about them, and burnt them 
black. 

It was a black day for Germany, and the hardest blow 
that has been struck at her heart and pride by British troops. 
For us the glory of the day is in the splendour of our men. 



XXX 

FIGHTING BEYOND FLERS 



I 

September 17 
The enemy has made desperate attempts to organise coun- 
ter-attacks to thrust back our lines from the ground gained 
by us since Friday morning. They have failed. We hold 
all the ground captured in the general assault, and yesterday 
and to-day our troops have gone further forward winning 
new and important positions. 

Mouquet Farm, for which the Australians fought with a 
most stubborn courage, entering the place several times with 
their patrols, was taken last night by a swift and successful 
assault. Left of that, below Thiepval, and to the east of 
that stronghold, attacks beginning last Thursday on a forti- 
fied position known as the "Wunderwerk" (a curious and 
villainous system of trenches and dug-outs) have been a 
brilliant success, and have extended our gain by a mile of 
frontage along the Danube trench. 

We have a strong flank line securing Courcelette and have 
pushed out beyond Martinpuich towards Eaucourt I'Abbaye, 
and beyond Flers towards Guedecourt. The day has not 
been so sensational as Friday, but solid progress has been 
made, and the enemy is kept nervous. 

He has been hurrying up reserves from Le Sars and 
Miraumont and places far back behind his lines. They were 
reported to be moving up yesterday by motor transport, 
and our long-range guns "dealt with them," to use the grim 
phrase of one of our artillery officers. 

The enemy's losses are certainly very frightful. His dead 

300 



FIGHTING BEYOND FLERS 301 

lie solid in certain parts of the battle front. There are fields 
of horror here round High Wood and above Delville Wood, 
and not all the shells which I saw slashing those rows of 
tree stumps to-day will give the enemy back those men who 
are being buried by his high explosives. 

The whole of the great stretch of battlefield along the 
high ridge to Delville Wood and Ginchy is one great grave- 
yard, and looking across it to-day, as I stood among shell- 
craters and old German trenches and the litter of a wide 
destruction, this great desolate horror was an evil panorama 
which chilled one's spirit. 

The enemy was flinging over heavy crumps and black 
shrapnel, but his shooting seemed to me wild and without 
definite targets. The reason of it was clear. In taking the 
high ridge we have the observation which was once his, 
and it is our artillery which now has the supreme advantage. 



The bombardment of September 15 was the most remark- 
able achievement ever done by British artillery, and not 
surpassed I should say in any army. Every detail of it was 
planned beforehand. 

Every "heavy" had its special objective and its own time- 
table working exactly with the infantry, concentrating upon 
the enemy's trenches and strong points, barraging his lines 
of communication, following the tracks of those motor 
monsters whose amazing adventures I described in my last 
despatch, and co-operating with the air service to reach out 
to distant targets. 

The field batteries were marvellously audacious in taking 
up new positions, and the F.O.O.'s (the forward observing 
officers) were gallant in getting up to the high ground as 
soon as our infantry had taken it and registering their 
batteries from these new view-points. 

I heard to-day the whole artillery scheme of one corps 



302 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

and the scientific precision with which the enemy's defences 
were destroyed made me shiver as in the presence of a high 
intelHgence distributing death on a great scale, by means 
of minute calculations of time and space, which, indeed, is 
exactly the truth. 

The enemy's artillery is still very strong, and it would 
be nonsense to depreciate his prodigious gun-power. But 
some at least of his batteries are in a perilous position now 
that we are able to observe them, and from my own obser- 
vation of his shell-fire to-day it seems to me that he is 
shifting them further back. 

He had not shifted them when our attack began on Friday 
morning last (although our counter-battery work was mak- 
ing it extremely hot for him), and it is remarkable that 
within two minutes of our attack he concentrated a par- 
ticularly fierce fire on High Wood, where our men were 
advancing. 

It is possible that his "sausage" balloons had observed 
the approach of the Tanks, and had seen them behind our 
trenches, like ichthyosauri waiting for their morning meal. 
But as I have previously hinted, there is sound evidence for 
the belief that he had prepared a great counter-attack along 
a wide front at the very time when our own was launched. 

This accounts for the great mass of men killed in his lines 
and for the large number of prisoners who fell into our 
hands. 



The capture of Mouquet Farm last night was made by a 
dash across a short strip of No Man's Land. The garrison 
there retreated into a tunnelled dug-out, which had at least 
two entrances, and showed no willingness to surrender, 
maintaining rifle fire from loop-holes after they were sur- 
rounded. 

The southern entrance to this underground stronghold 
was blown in by high explosives, while men kept guard of 



FIGHTING BEYOND FLERS 303 

the other entry, waiting for any Germans who might come 
up to surrender. 

This capture of Mouquet Farm (a stick or two above a 
heap of broken brickwork, as I saw it some weeks ago) has 
made the position of Thiepval still more closely gripped — 
the garrison there holds out stubbornly in its tunnelled cor- 
ridors — and helped forward the assault upon the Danube 
Trench launched with absolute success. 

This carried further the operation begun last Thursday, 
when our troops made one of those brilliant assaults upon 
the intricate system of earthworks to the south of Thiepval, 
which I watched a few weeks ago, when the Wiltshires and 
the Gloucesters did so well. 

On the left, running southwards down the ridge, is an 
extraordinary V-shaped wedge with an open end. This 
position was not attacked, but our men drove straight up to 
the left of it, upon the *'Wonder-work," which was one of 
those nests of dug-outs upon which the Germans lavished 
all their skill in digging and pummelling and strengthening 
and furnishing in what soldiers call "the days of peace" — 
the old days of ordinary trench-warfare. 

It was no longer a "Wonder-work" when our men rushed 
upon it. A whirlwind bombardment which had preceded 
them, and heavy shell-fire for weeks past had broken the 
concrete emplacements and flung up the earth with deep 
shell-pits, so that it was merely a part of the general chaos 
existing on these battlefields. 

Five German officers and ii6 men were still alive there, 
and surrendered instantly. "You were on us like the wind," 
said one of these officers afterwards. "We had no time 
to defend ourselves." Other men fled from neighbouring 
shell-craters, but ran straight into our curtain fire and fell. 

Our lads chased some of them as they ran, but halted this 
side of our bursting shells, and came back "fearfully 
bucked," to use their own phrase, because they had put the 
enemy to flight and mastered him so utterly. 



304 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



Yesterday counter-attacks were attempted by the 5th Re- 
serve Regiment of Guards, but they were not carried 
through with resolution. The first wave of men came a 
hundred yards or so towards our men, then hesitated, flung 
their bombs, which fell ludicrously short, and ran back. 

On the left they were bolder and brave, and a very long 
and stubborn fight took place with bombs, ending in the 
complete victory of our men after they had flung 1,506 
hand-grenades. 

North-east of Flers other counter-attacks were attempted 
yesterday, but our troops who were advancing towards 
Guedecourt went right through them and over them with 
irresistible spirit, checked only by concealed machine-guns in 
a harvest field on their wing. 

In Bouleaux Wood, to the north of Leuze Wood, there 
has been fierce hand-to-hand fighting, and in the centre of it 
is an unfortunate Tank — one of the few casualties among 
the armoured monsters — which lies with its nose in the 
earth, forming a barricade between the opposing bombers. 

The general situation along our attacking front leaves 
the initiative in our hands and reveals the temporary de- 
moralisation of the enemy's troops and command. 

One cannot say more than that. The enemy has had a 
hard blow, but he has reserves of strength which are con- 
trolled by cool brains behind his lines. 

There is still much fighting to be done before Germany's 
weakness reaches the breaking point, but the losses we have 
inflicted upon her during the last three days are so terrible 
that she cannot hide her wounds. 



XXXI 

MONSTERS AND MEN 



r 

September i8 
In all the accounts of the fighting since Friday the story of 
the Tanks — those weird and wonderful armoured monsters 
— runs like a humorous thread. Full of humour and fan- 
tasy, because of their shape and qualities, they are also 
filled with very gallant men, to whom great honour is due. 
The skippers and crews of these land-ships, as they are 
called, had to go out alone in many cases in advance of the 
infantry and upon hazardous chances, which each one of 
them knew were weighted with the risk, almost the certainty 
— for it was a new, untried experiment — of death. They 
had astounding adventures and a large measure of success, 
and it was due not to any kind of luck, but to great skill 
and great courage. 

I have already told the first stories of their actions. To- 
day I obtained a full narrative of their achievements, and 
it is one of the most dramatic and gallant records in the 
history of this war. 

Two of them who set out to attack the line from Combles 
to Morval made a rendezvous at Wedge Wood, and took 
up their position at night. One of them set off and ambled 
slowly until it came within 400 yards north-west of Com- 
bles, far in advance of the infantry. Here it sat for five 
hours, fighting the enemy alone, and shooting down German 
bombing parties, until it was severely damaged. 

The other Tank in the neighbourhood of Bouleaux Wood 
reached the enemy's trenches near Morval, and, finding that 

305 



306 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

it had left the infantry behind, went back to inquire for 
them. They were held up by German bombers in a trench, 
so the Tank came to the rescue, bucked over the trench, and 
crushed the bombers into the earth before backing into a 
deep shell-crater and toppling over. Here for an hour and 
a half it formed a barricade between British and German 
bombers, and the crew got out and tried to hoist it out of 
the shell-hole under heavy fire. One of the men picked up 
a live bomb flung by the enemy, and tried to hurl it to a safe 
distance, away from his comrades, but was blown to bits. 
Finally the "skipper," with his surviving men, came back 
to our lines, leaving the derelict monster still used as a 
barricade. 

North of Ginchy telegraph one of the Tanks attacked a 
machine-gun emplacement and killed many of the men. 
East of Delville Wood another advanced upon a German 
trench called Laager Lane, and so frightened the enemy 
that about a hundred of them came out under white flags 
and surrendered to it, following the monster back to our 
lines. 

The attack on Hop Alley, by Delville Wood, was led by 
a Tank which attacked a number of bombers and put them 
to flight, so that the trench was cleared for the infantry. 
Afterwards, under a heavy German barrage, it could ad- 
vance no further, and the skipper and his crew, after doing 
this fine work, came out of their monster and, with splendid 
heroism, helped our wounded for three hours. 

The officer who did what the soldiers call the great 
"stunt" in Flers told me his story to-day, and I found him 
to be as modest a fellow as any naval officer on a light 
cruiser, and of the same fine type. He went into Flers be- 
fore the infantry and followed by them, cheering in high 
spirits, and knocked out a machine-gun which began to 
play on him. The town was not much damaged by shell- 
fire, so that the Tank could walk about real streets, and 
the garrison, which was hiding about in dug-outs, surren- 
dered in small, scared groups. Then the other Tanks came 



MONSTERS AND MEN 307 

into Flers, and together they lolloped around the town in a 
free and easy manner before going further afield. 

The Tank which went through High Wood did great exe- 
cution over the German trenches, and another wandered 
around shell-craters "killing" German machine-guns. The 
casualties were slight considering the great success of the 
experiment, and on all sides among our soldiers there is 
nothing but praise of the gallant men who led them. They 
are still going strong. 

To-day one of the monsters — It was old "Cordon Rouge" 
— came waddling over shell-craters, climbing over broken 
trenches, and fetched up outside the door of a brigadier's 
dug-out. From the inside of the beast came a very cool 
and grave young man, who saluted in a naval way, and 
said, *T await your orders, sir, for going into action." 

"And I'm very glad you didn't bring your monster down 
into my dug-out," said the brigadier. "But it's very kind of 
you to call, and no doubt we shall want you shortly." 



I have been to-day, and for four days, among the men 
who have broken the Flers line and given the enemy the 
hardest blows he has ever suffered on this front. Sir 
Douglas Haig has named them this afternoon in his great 
bulletin, paying a tribute to their valour in a broad, general 
way, without letting the enemy know too much about the 
battalions facing him. They were all splendid. For the big 
battle on Friday was a hard one, and not a "walk over," 
so that our men were put to the supreme test of courage by 
most damnable shell-fire and fierce concentrated barrages by 
which the enemy's gunners at long range endeavoured to 
support their lost and suffering infantry. 

What touched me most, perhaps, though Heaven knows 
the experiences of all our soldiers made one awe-struck, was 
the way in which our newest and youngest men went 
through with their business. There were some of them 



308 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

Derby recruits, who had never yet seen what shell-fire 
means in the Somme battle. Older men among them, who 
knew, were sorry for them, wondered how they would 
"stick it," and said, with a view to encouragement, "Cheer 
up, you'll soon be dead." They did not hang back, these 
new fellows. The rawest recruits among them strained 
forward with the rest, floundered over the shell-holes like 
the others, leapt into the German trenches, like men of old 
fighting spirit. 



The London men did gloriously and had one of the hard- 
est points of the attack, and came under some of the heaviest 
storms of fire. These young Civil servants and men of the 
London suburbs, who used to go to City offices by early 
morning trains — do you remember how they spoke once of 
"London pride"? — fought sternly and endured with stoi- 
cism, and had a laugh left in them after the battle when 
they forgot the fright fulness of it all and remembered the 
fantastic adventures of the Tanks which waddled into the 
German lines, knocking down tree-stumps, climbing over 
heaps of ruin, and "putting the wind up" in the enemy's 
ranks. "It was a fair treat!" said one of them. "Every 
time I think of it I can't help laughing!" And yet it was 
no joke, after all, but very grim and deadly work. 

There was hardly a county of England which did not 
have its sons in this battle, and all those English regiments 
of the north and the south were so good, so fine, so full of 
spirit, that it made one wonder at the stock that has bred 
these men, giving to them out of the strain of England some 
quality of blood that has withstood all the weakening in- 
fluences of factory life and city life. And yet, having 
written that, I see it is foolishness. For men of all the 
Empire were here, and it was the spirit of the whole race 
that rose at dawn out of the trenches and shell-craters and 
went forward into the furnace fires. 



MONSTERS AND MEN 309 



4 

About the Scottish troops I can say no more than I have 
said a hundred times, loving all those Lowlanders and 
Highlanders "this side idolatry." 

I was with some of their officers to-day again, and heard 
stories of their men who took one of the German strong- 
holds after a serpentine plan of attack difficult to perform 
because in attacking men will go straight, and coming 
under shell-fire which would have broken the spirit of 
weaker men. But they went on in waves over the German 
trenches and into the village where some hundreds of men 
surrendered to them, coming up out of the dug-outs as soon 
as the Scots were about their hiding-places. 

The German soldiers had been thoroughly frightened by 
the Tank, which had come nosing in before the infantry, and 
many of them huddled piteously under its flanks in order 
to escape from its rapid fire. Sixty men came out of one 
dug-out and surrendered in this way. Afterwards the Scots 
pushed on beyond the stronghold and established posts and 
dug cover for themselves against the enemy's gun-fire, 
which threw an enormous number of high explosives into 
their old place of defence, which was stacked with timber 
for dug-outs and other stores of war material. 



The Canadians gained great glory on Friday and Satur- \/ 
day. After their long and hard experiences in the salient 
they came down to the Somme battlefield determined to "get 
their own back," and do great adventures. Their attack 
was finely organised, and when all the difficulties are known 
will be put down to their credit as a really great military 
achievement. Among them is a body of French Canadians, 
dark-eyed fellows whom it is strange to meet about the 



310 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

villages of France speaking volubly with the peasants in 
their own tongue, a little old-fashioned, as it was once 
spoken in the days of Louis XIV, when Canada was one of 
the brightest rays in the glory of the Sun-King. These 
fellows, close in likeness to the provincial Frenchman, 
though perhaps more dour and reserved, went away like 
wolves a-hunting, and raced forward to a German strong- 
hold which they had asked leave to take. 

They were swept by machine-gun fire and checked by a 
stubborn defence on the part of the enemy, but with the 
help of the two Tanks, called "Creme de Menthe" and 
"Cordon Rouge," who sat on the enemy's machine-gun em- 
placements and knocked out his machine-gun crews, the 
French Canadians carried the stronghold and captured 
hundreds of prisoners. 

Later I hope to write the full story of the Canadian vic- 
tory which will thrill through all the towns and fields of 
the great Dominion like an heroic song, for these men from 
overseas were very careless of death so that they might win. 



Then there were the New Zealanders, those clean-cut, 
handsome fellows in the felt hats with a bit of red ribbon 
round the brim, which I looked for down village streets 
and in French harvest fields before they went into battle. 
Australia has set a great example to them, being first in 
the fighting round Pozieres, where they fought as wonder- 
fully as in the Dardanelles. They were not less gallant in 
the great charge they made at dawn on Friday, going for-* 
ward very far to a distant place across No Man's Land, and 
across German trenches, under heavy fire, and out "into 
the blue" in pursuit of retreating men. 



MONSTERS AND MEN 311 



Sir Douglas Haig mentions last of all the Guards, but not 
because they were least in valour. They fought as the 
Guards always fight, with superb discipline, and with a 
tradition, that is sacred to them. I saw them before they 
went into battle, and had a meal in the mess of the Irish 
Guards, and saw them marching up to take their line in the 
battlefields. 

They are not the old Guards who fought at Ypres and in 
many bloody battles when we were hard pressed, and after- 
wards at Loos, when they had some fearful hours. Many 
of those brave men lie under the soil of France, and new 
men have taken their place. But the tradition stays, and the 
physical standard of the men has not been lowered by a 
hair's breadth, and their discipline is still upon the same high 
and hard level. Every one knew they would put up a great 
fight, and they did. 

They had a very difficult part of the line, and had to pass 
machine-guns which swept upon their ranks in enfilade fire, 
and had to advance over ground covered by whirlwind fire 
of high explosives. But they gained their way forward in 
a series of charges which went straight through three lines 
of German trenches, and captured large numbers of pris- 
oners after heavy fighting, and held on to their ground 
against strong counter-attacks. The tradition of the Guards 
has been upheld, and a new tradition has been given to them. 

I must put into a line some late important news of the 
day, which is the great casualties inflicted upon the enemy 
in the neighbourhood of Guedecourt. A body of the ene- 
my's infantry was observed to be retreating through the 
mist, and they were caught by some of our advanced patrols, 
who cut them to pieces with machine-gun fire. Elsewhere 
the enemy is surrendering in small batches, unable to stand 
the fearful slaughter inflicted upon them by our guns. 



S12 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

8 

September 19 

Some of the most noble fighting qualities in the great bat- 
tle of Friday last were shown by the troops who were re- 
sponsible for the centre of the attack directed against Flers 
and the country immediately to the right of that village. 
Those who' were given the task of assaulting Flers itself 
were mostly recruited from the London area. 

They had not seen much fighting before going into the 
great fire of the Somme battle. Their General, who had 
raised and trained them, was sure of them, and had taught 
each man the task expected of him on this great day, so 
that whatever might befall their officers, the men should not 
be mere sheep without a sense of guidance or direction. 

When they formed up in line to the north of Delville 
Wood (with awkward bits of German trench thrust down 
upon their right flank), they had three lines in front of 
them over a distance of about 2,500 yards barring their 
way to Flers. It was a long way and a hard way to go, but 
they leapt forward in solid waves of keen and eager men 
following a short and violent barrage from our heavy guns. 

In a few minutes from the start the first two waves 
dropped into the German switch line running diagonally 
from the real Flers line. They found it choked with Ger- 
man dead, killed by our gun-fire, and among them only a 
poor remnant of living men. The first two waves stayed in 
the trench to hold it. The others swept on, smashed through 
the Flers line, and forged their way over shell-craters under 
machine-gun and shrapnel fire, to the outskirts of Flers, 
which they reached between nine and ten in the morning. 

Some London men were held up by barbed wire pro- 
tecting a hidden trench which had not been previously ob- 
served, and a call was made for one of the Tanks which 
had come rolling up behind. It crawled forward, walking 
over the shell-craters, and smashed the whole length of 
barbed wire in front, firing rapidly upon the enemy's bomb- 



MONSTERS AND MEN 313 

ers in the trench and putting them out of action. This 
enabled the whole line to advance into Flers village at the 
tail of another Tank now famous for its adventures in 
Flers, which I have already narrated. 

The victorious troops found but little opposition in the 
village. Curiously enough, it was not strongly defended or 
fortified. There were few of the tunnels and dug-outs 
which make many of these places hard to capture, and the 
enemy was utterly demoralised by the motor monster which 
appeared as a bad dream before them. The enemy flung a 
heavy barrage, but our men had few casualties. 



9 

An attempt was made to reach Guedecourt, and, as I 
have already told, one of our Tanks reached the outskirts of 
that new objective. The infantry attack failed owing to 
massed machine-gun fire, and the men fell back to a new 
line of trenches hastily dug by the enemy before their 
defeat, which now gave us useful cover. This was 2,700 
yards from the starting point at dawn, and was almost a 
record as a continuous advance. 

The enemy rallied and made two counter-attacks, one at 
three o'clock in the afternoon, the other between four and 
five. They were tragic attempts. Some of our machine- 
gunners lay in waiting for them and mowed down these 
rows of men as they came bravely forward. It was such a 
sight as I watched at Falfemont Farm when solid bars of 
tall men crumbled and fell before a scythe of bullets. 

At 6.30 on the following evening our troops made an- 
other attempt to reach Guedecourt in co-operation with the 
men on their right, but they were unable to get the whole 
distance in spite of a most heroic assault after two days of 
heavy fighting. 

The force attacking on the right of Flers on Friday 
morning had similar experiences and more difficulties. They 



314 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

are men who know all there is to know about the Ypres 
salient, where I met them first nearly a year ago. They are 
men who have old scores to wipe off against the enemy in 
the way of poison gas and flame jets, and they went very 
fiercely into the battle. 

To start with, they had to clear out a place known as 
\' Mystery Corner, to the right of Delville Wood, where they 
captured fifty-one prisoners, and afterwards a trench a little 
to the north of that, thrust down as a wedge be ween their 
left flank and the right of the troops who had started out 
for Flers. 

This second strong point was wiped out by the Tanks 
who came and sat down on it, and by a small body of north 
countrymen working with the Tanks. Their particular job 
was done, and they might have stayed there, but, seeing the 
long waves of their comrades streaming forward tO' the 
main attack, they could not hold back, but followed on, all 
through the fight keeping touch in a most orderly way with 
the men ahead of them, and doing, as they put it, "odd 
jobs," such as knocking out machine-guns and killing 
snipers. 

It was so with other men. Having done their allotted task 
they would not stand and hold, but streamed after the tide 
which went through and past them, determined to be in at 
the death. 

In the attacks upon Guedecourt that day and on the eve- 
ning of the next they had a hard bad time like the men on 
their left. They were under enfilade fire from machine- 
guns, which chattered hour after hour, never silent. "The 
air was stiff with bullets," says one of the officers. Men 
finding their only cover in shell craters could not put their 
heads up, so close did the bullets slash the earth. And in 
other shell-craters not far away were many German riflemen 
picking off any man who appeared for a moment out of the 
tumbled earth. 

It was a hellish neighbourhood, yet when the moment for 
the second attack came mixed companies of men from 



MONSTERS AND MEN 315 

various regiments who had mingled in the inevitable con- 
fusion of such a place and time (it was now thirty-six hours 
since the dawn of Friday) rose out of their holes in the 
earth and formed up as on parade, and went forward in a 
fine gallant style. 

It was impossible in the face of all those bullets about 
them, and they fell back to the original line of advance well 
to the north of Flers, which was good enough for that 
day after such heroic work. There was no Division in our 
armies who could have done better, nor who did better, on a 
great day when all did well. 

lO 

And now I must tell a little more in detail the story of 
the Guards in this battle. It is hard to tell it, and not all 
can be told yet because of the enemy. The Guards had 
their full share of the fighting, and of the difficult ground, 
with strong forces against them. They knew that would be 
so before they went into battle, and yet they did not ask 
for better things, but awaited the hour of attack with strong, 
gallant hearts, quite sure of their courage, proud of their 
name, full of trust in their officers, eager to give a smashing 
blow at the enemy. 

These splendid men, so tall and proper, so hard and fine, 
went away as one might imagine the old knights and yeomen 
of England at Agincourt. For the first time in the history 
of the Coldstreamers, three battalions of them charged in 
line, great solid waves of men, as fine a sight as the world 
could show. Behind them were the Grenadiers, and again 
behind these men, the Irish. 

They had not gone more than 200 yards before they came 
under the enfilade fire of massed machine-guns in trenches 
not previously observed. The noise of this fire was so 
loud and savage that although hundreds of guns were firing, 
not a shot could be heard. It was just the stabbing, staccato 
hammering of the German maxims. Men fell, but the lines 



316 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

were not broken. Gaps were made in the ranks, but they 
closed up. The wounded did not call for help, but cheered 
on those who swept past and on, shouting, "Go on, Lily 
Whites !" — which is the old name for the Coldstreamers — 
"Get at 'em, Lily Whites!" 

They went on at a hot pace with their bayonets lowered. 
Out of the crumpled earth — ^all pits and holes and hillocks, 
torn up by great gun-fire — grey figures rose and fled. They 
were German soldiers terror-stricken by this rushing tide of 
men. 

The Guards went on. Then they were checked by two 
lines of trenches, wired and defended by machine-guns and 
bombers. They came upon them quicker than they ex- 
pected. Some of the officers were puzzled. Could these be 
the trenches marked out for attack — or other unknown 
trenches? Anyhow, they must be taken — and the Guards 
took them by frontal assault full in the face of continual 
blasts of machine-gun bullets. 

There was hard and desperate fighting. The Germans 
defended themselves to the death. They bombed our men 
who attacked them with the bayonet, served their machine- 
guns until they were killed, and would only surrender when 
our men were on top of them. It was a very bloody hour 
or more. By that time the Irish Guards had joined the 
others. All the Guards were together, and together they 
passed the trenches, swinging left inevitably under the 
machine-gun fire which poured upon them from their right, 
but going steadily deeper into the enemy country until they 
were 2,000 yards from their starting place. 

Then it was necessary to call a halt. Many officers and 
men had fallen. To go further would be absolute death. 
The troops on the right had been utterly held up. The 
Guards were "up in the air," with an exposed flank, open to 
all the fire that was flung upon them from the enemy's lines. 
The temptation to go farther was great. The German in- 
fantry was on the run. They were dragging their guns 
away. There was a great panic among the men who had 



MONSTERS AND MEN 317 

been hiding In trenches. But the German machine gunners 
kept to their posts to safeguard a rout, and the Guards had 
gone far enough through their scourging bullets. 

They decided very wisely to hold the line they had gained, 
and to dig in where they stood, and to make forward posts 
with strong points. They had killed a great number of 
Germans and taken 200 prisoners and fought grandly. So, 
now they halted and dug and took cover as best they could 
in shell-craters and broken ground, under fierce fire from 
the enemy's guns. 

The night was a dreadful one for the wounded, and for 
men who did their best for the wounded, trying to be deaf 
to agonising sounds. Many of them had hairbreadth 
escapes from death. One young officer In the Irish Guards 
lay in a shell-hole with two comrades, and then left It for a 
while to cheer up other men lying In surrounding craters. 
When he came back he found his two friends lying dead, 
blown to bits by a shell. 

But In spite of all these bad hours, the Guards kept cool, 
kept their discipline, their courage and their spirit. The 
Germans launched counter-attacks against them, but were 
annihilated. The Guards held their ground, and gained the 
greatest honour for self-sacrificing courage which has ever 
given a special meaning to their name. They took the 
share which all of us knew they would take In the greatest 
of all our battles since the first day of July, and, with other 
regiments, struck a vital blow at the enemy's line of defence. 



XXXII 
LONDON PRIDE 



1 

September 20 
Another dark, wet day, filled with grey mist, and rain- 
storms and mud. Up in the lines British soldiers and Ger- 
mans lie near each other in shell-craters, waist high in water. 
The rain is slashing upon them, and it is cold. But though 
gunners cannot see, nor airmen fly, the bombardment goes 
on, and all day long there has been the dull crashing of 
heavy shells, on both sides deep and sullen boomings through 
the white fog of this foul day. 

Last night and early in the morning the enemy attempted 
a counter-attack at different parts of the line. They at- 
tacked heavily here and there with strong bombing parties, 
who for a time forced a way into our new lines, at the corner 
of Courcelette and the north of Martinpuich and the ground 
further east. 

Many of them were killed — the bad weather does not stop 
this slaughter — and they were driven but and back again by 
men who, though cold in their shell-craters, kept their cour- 
age and flung themselves fiercely upon the German assault- 
ing troops, in sharp bombing fights, which left us with more 
ground — at least in one part of the line — than we had be- 
fore. All of which shows that the enemy is hard pressed 
and tightly held, and that our men — infantry to infantry — 
not counting gunfire, have the mastery of these German 
reserves, and a spirit that refuses to be beaten even by 
artillery. 

I have written many thousands of words about this 

318 



LONDON PRIDE 319 

abominable war since the first shot was fired, and for fifteen 
months and more have been trying to picture as closely as 
possible the life of our soldiers in action, but I am conscious 
that all I have written has given but a vague, dim, far-off 
glimpse of the character, sufferings, and valour of our men. 
How is it possible to show these things truly, to make my 
readers understand something of the truth when I cannot 
understand myself, but can only guess and grope at the 
qualities which make them do the things they do? Take 
our last great day of battle — ^September 15 — there were 
troops of many different types engaged in its fighting — 
Canadians, New Zealanders, Scots, Irish, and English of 
many counties. One would expect to find differences among 
these men, to find some harder than others, or softer than 
others, battalions here and there who flinched before the 
storm of steel and those frightful shells which open great 
chasms in the earth. But on Friday the courage of all 
those men was of one quality, and a man would be a liar 
who said that one set of men were less brave than another. 



To-day I went among the London men, and afterwards 
among some Highlanders, who have a special place in my 
heart. In blood, in upbringing, in physique, in temperament 
one could not find two bodies of men more unlike, yet they 
have been alike in splendid endurance under merciless fire 
last Friday and onwards. "I cannot understand how my 
boys stuck it out during the worst hours they had," said a 
colonel of one of the City of London battalions. "They 
just had to sit in shell-craters under heavy crumps. Many 
men would not have gone through with it. But the London 
boys just stayed there, gamely. They are wonderful." 

The colonel himself was wonderful — this old Territorial 
soldier, nearly sixty years of age, with a white moustache 
and grizzled eye-brows that did not hide the bright and 



320 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

almost boyish light in his eyes. He used to be a dyspeptic 
and a "bundle of nerves," so he told me, and did not think 
he could last three months of war. But now, at the begin- 
ning of the third year of war he led his battalion into action, 
went under some of the fiercest fire along the whole battle- 
line with them, and lay side by side with his "boys," as he 
calls them, in a shell-hole which became filled with water by 
violent rainstorms. For three days and nights he lay there 
while the enemy was trying to shell our men to death by his 
monstrous five-point-nines. 

There were London men with him and all around him in 
the same kind of holes — for there were no trenches here — 
and though even the sergeants were shaking with a kind of 
ague, not with cold, but after the nervous strain of enduring 
the incessant shock of high explosives, they "carried on," — 
O splendid phrase! — and not a fellow played the coward, 
though all were very much afraid, as all men are in these 
frightful hours. 

They had been born and bred in London. They had worn 
black coats and "toppers" in the City — all the officers among 
them — and the men had been in warehouses and offices and 
shops down Thames-side and away to Whitehall. They 
had played the gentle game of dominoes in luncheon hours 
over a glass of milk and a Bath bun. They had grown 
nasturtiums in suburban gardens, and their biggest adven- 
ture in life had been the summer manoeuvres of the dear old 
"Terriers." And now — they fought through German 
trenches and lay in shell-holes, and every nerve in their 
brains and bodies was ravaged by the tumult of shell-fire 
about them and by the wounded who lay with them. But 
these Londoners who fight on their nerves were no less 
staunch than men like the Scots and the North Country 
lads, who, as far as I can see, have no nerves at all 



LONDON PRIDE 321 



There were some strange individual adventures in the 
midst of the general experience of rushing two lines of 
German trenches through a violent barrage and getting for- 
ward to open country, where they dug themselves in. 
Among ten machine-guns which they captured on their way 
up there was one handled by a German gtmner who awaited 
his chance to sweep the ranks of the London lads. But he 
did not get it. An officer of the London regiment who was 
carrying a rifle "spotted" the man quickly and killed him 
with a straight shot before he had fired more than a few 
bullets. That rifle-shot saved the lives of many of our men. 

In the second German trench there was a sharp fight, and 
one single combat between one of our officers — ^who hap- 
pens to be a South African — and a great lusty German who 
was a much bigger man than ours. It was a bayonet duel 
as two mediaeval knights might have fought in the old days 
with heavy swords. 

Our officer was already wounded twice. He had a bullet 
through the shoulder, and a damaged jaw. But five times 
he pierced his enemy with the bayonet. It should have been 
enough, but the great German still fought. Both bayonets 
were dropped and the two men closed and wrestled with 
each other, trying to get a grip of the throat. The German 
wrestler, bloody as he was, seemed to keep all his brute 
strength, but he was laid out by a bullet in the neck from a 
sergeant of the Londoners who came to the rescue of the 
officer. Afterwards this easy-going gentleman — from 
South Africa — chatted with his colonel over the body of 
his man as quietly and calmly as though he were in his 
smoking-room at home, and paid no attention whatever to 
his wounds, refusing to go down to the doctor, but going 
forward again with his men. 

Some of the men went too far in their eagerness, away 
into the "blue." No word came back from them. No 



322 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

signal. Later one man trudged back, bringing two pris- 
oners. "Where are the others?" he was asked. He pointed 
far away, and said "Over there." He is the only man who 
has come back from that place of mystery. 



Some of the London battalions did not suffer so heavily 
as might have been expected, from the hard task they had, 
and the wonderful way in which they fought. What loss 
they suffered was the price of extreme valour. The charge 
of the Light Brigade at Balaclava has been put into song as 
one of the great heroic tales of history. Will any one make 
a song of the London men who fought forward through a 
hurricane of fire? 

The stretcher-bearers of the London Territorials did their 
work nobly, and among them as a volunteer was one German 
who deserves a word of praise, by men with a sporting 
spirit, fair to their enemy. He had first been taken prisoner 
by an officer of ours, who was then hit by a piece of shell or 
a rifle bullet. He fell, and could not rise again, but his 
prisoner, who was an officer, too, picked him up and carried 
him across the battlefield to our dressing station, and then 
stood by for an escort to take him away. 

The General commanding these London men spoke of 
them to-day with a thrill in his voice. He had been with 
them, and had reconnoitred their ground, and had seen their 
way of fighting. When I spoke to him he had been without 
sleep and rest for two days and nights. "No men could 
have done better," he said. "No general could wish to com- 
mand braver men or better men. Their discipline is splen- 
did. There is never any crime among them. They behave 
always as gentlemen should behave, and they fight with fine 
hearts. These London boys of mine had one of the hardest 
tasks on Friday, and they carried it through with a most 
gallant spirit." 



LONDON PRIDE 323 



Another day I must write of the Highlanders whom I 
met to-day — those Gay Gordons of whom I have written 
several times when I have found them in other parts of the 
battle-line. Some of them waved hands to me to-day and 
shouted cheerfully across a track of mud, and, seeing the 
faces under their bonnets, I was enormously glad to find 
these old friends of mine alive and well after many days of 
fighting. Squarer, tougher, harder men than the Lon- 
doners, they fought in their own style, gloriously, with all 
their comrades in kilts or trews who swept across the Ger- 
man lines, and then held their captured ground under in- 
fernal fire. One story they told me of the things they have 
seen is a grim little picture which is etched in my brain. 

Two of them went down into a German dug-out and 
started back when they saw a man seated there at table. 
The table was laid for a meal, but the food was uneaten. 
It was a dead German officer who sat before them, as though 
asleep. The top of the dug-out had been knocked in by one 
of our shells, and something had fallen and killed him as he 
was beginning breakfast. The Gordons went into other 
dug-outs and found other dead bodies, but it was this sit- 
ting man that they remember most. 



XXXIII 
THE SPLENDID NEW ZEALANDERS 



I 

September 23 
It was inevitable that after the great battle of September 15 
our line should have ragged edges and run up or down into 
small salients. This was due to the greater progress made 
by different bodies of troops; and to the way in which 
isolated groups of Germans held on very stubbornly to these 
stretches of ground not in the general line of our advance. 

During the past forty-eight hours a good deal has been 
done to clear out these pockets, or wedges, and to straighten 
out the line from Courcelette eastwards. 

This morning our troops did a useful bit of work in such 
a place between Courcelette and Martinpuich, knocking out 
a strong post and taking some prisoners, with whom were 
two officers. Elsewhere strong posts thrust out by us be- 
yond the main trenches have been linked up, so that the line 
now runs in a reasonably even way from the north of 
Courcelette across the Bapaume Road, above Martinpuich, 
and so on to the north of Flers. 

This linking-up and clearing-up work now done to a great 
extent, puts us in a stronger position of defence, to hold 
what we have gained, against any attempts made by the 
enemy in counter-attack. 

He has made many attempts since September 1 5 to drive 
our troops out of the high ground, which is vital to his 
means of observation, and the failure of them has cost 
him a great price in life. 

324 



THE SPLENDID NEW ZEALANDERS 326 



Among the most desperate thrusts, pressed with stubborn 
bravery by bodies of German soldiers, collected hastily and 
flung with but little plan or preliminary organisation against 
our lines, were those directed upon the New Zealanders, 
who repelled them after hard and long conflicts fought out 
for the most part with naked steel. 

In all the fighting since July i there has not been anything 
more fierce or more bloody than these hand-to-hand strug- 
gles on the left of Flers, and the New Zealanders have 
gained a greater name for themselves (it was already a great 
name since Gallipoli) as soldiers who hate to give up what 
they have gained, who will hold on to ground with a grim 
obstinacy against heavy odds, and if they are ordered to 
retreat because of the military situation round them come 
back again with a stern resolve to "get the goods." 

That is not only my reading of the men, and I do not pre- 
tend to know them well, but is the summing-up of an of- 
ficer, not from their own country, who has seen them fight 
during these last few days, and who spoke of them with a 
thrill of admiration in his voice, after watching the stoicism 
with which they endured great shell-fire, the spirit with 
which they attacked after great fatigues and hardships, and 
the rally of men, discouraged for a while by their loss of 
officers, which swept the Germans back into panic-stricken 
flight. 

This struggle covers a week's fighting since September 15, 
when at dawn the New Zealanders advanced in waves to a 
series of positions which would bring them up to the left of 
Flers if they had the luck to get as far. On their right were 
the troops whose capture of Flers village I have already 
described, and on their left other troops attacking High 
Wood and the ground north of it. 

The men of New Zealand went forward with hardly a 
check, to the German switch trench 500 yards from the 



326 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

starting line. They were men of Auckland, Canterbury, 
Otago, and Wellington, and they put their trust in the 
bayonet and desired to get close to their enemy. 

They had their desire. In the switch trench the Germans 
defended themselves to the last gasp, and, as far as I can 
make out, only four of them were left alive after that 
frightful encounter. It was a fight to the death on both 
sides, and the New Zealanders did not cross that ditch at 
full strength. 

On the way up they lost under shrapnel and machine- 
gun fire. On the other side of the ditch their lines were 
thinner. But they were on the other side, and the ditch 
behind them was a grave upon which they turned their 
backs to get across the next stretch of ground to trenches 
800 yards ahead. 

The New Zealand Rifles covered this ground quickly, 
moving in open order, but keeping in touch with each other 
by fine discipline and an esprit de corps which is better than 
discipline. 



That next system of trench work, two lines heavily wired 
and deeply dug, part of the famous Flers line, was a great 
obstacle. Our gun-fire, grand as it had been, had not laid 
all the wire low nor destroyed the trenches. A swish of 
machine-gun bullets showed that the enemy was alive and 
savage. 

An infantry assault on such a line had to be paid for, 
sometimes by a great number of dead and wounded. But 
it was the day of the Tanks. Two of them had tried to 
keep pace with the New Zealand attack, but had lagged 
behind like short-winded creatures suffering from stitch — 
and no wonder, looking at the shell-craters and pits across 
which they had to bring their long bodies, crawling in and 
crawling out, with their tails above their heads and their 
heads above their tails. 



THE SPLENDID NEW ZEALANDERS 327 

But they arrived in time to attack the Flers line, and in 
a very deliberate and stolid way they sidled along the barbed 
wire, smashing it into the earth, before poking their big 
snouts over the German parapets, hauling themselves up, 
and firing from both flanks upon German machine-gun 
teams. 

With this noteworthy help, which saved time and trouble 
and life, the New Zealanders took the double trenches of the 
Flers line, and again pushed on, another 700 yards, across 
a sunken road with steep banks and very deep dug-outs, 
where the enemy did not stay to meet them until they had 
established themselves on a line running westwards from 
the top of Flers village, now in the hands of our English 
lads. 

One of the Tanks followed them, getting down the steep 
bank with its nose to earth, and lumbering up the other 
side like a huge elephant (without a trunk). 

A German battery 1,500 yards away searched for It with 
shell-fire, but did not get within hitting distance of its ar- 
moured skin. Eventually it was the German battery that 
was knocked out by our guns. 

However, this was a side-show, and the Tanks must not 
take all the glory away from the infantry, who had not ar- 
moured skins, alas, and who were facing murderous fire else- 
where. 



They had been ordered to swing left to make a flanking 
fj-ont up the edge of a valley running north-west of Flers, 
right away beyond the village, and this they did most gal- 
lantly, although at the time they stuck out like a thin wedge 
into German territory, because at that time they had no 
support on their left (our English fellows, as I have de- 
scribed in an earlier despatch, had been having a fearful 
time in and beyond High Wood ) , and on the right the other 
English troops were busy with the capture of Flers. 



328 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

It was clearly and undeniably a hazardous position for 
the New Zealanders all alone out there, and they were or- 
dered to fall back to the line going straight westwards from 
the top of Flers village, which they helped to hold, on the 
night of the 15th to i6th. 

From that day onwards the enemy made repeated counter- 
attacks. Sometimes they were in feeble strength, shattered 
quickly, but they grew in intensity and numbers as the days 
passed, while the New Zealanders were still in a rather pre- 
carious position, "a rocky position," says one of their of- 
ficers, owing to the weakness of their left flank. 

Right down on that flank Germans were still holding out 
in shell-craters with a way open behind them, so that sup- 
ports might come down to drive a wedge between the New 
Zealanders and the English troops north of High Wood. 

This was attempted by something like a brigade of Ger- 
mans, who advanced in six or seven waves upon the English 
soldiers — who were outnumbered by more than two to one — 
in a steady, determined way. They were met out in the 
open with the bayonet. It was the old way of fighting men 
meeting men, staring into each other's eyes, trusting to their 
own strength and skill with sharp steel, and not to engines 
of war with high explosives or quick-firing guns. 

If men fight it is the best way though not pleasant and 
agreeable for ladies to watch from silken canopies, as in the 
old days of the tourney, when gentlemen hacked at each 
other with axes, just for fun. A New Zealand officer 
watched it from a little distance, and his breath came quick 
when he described it to me. The German ranks were broken 
and a remnant fled. 

But it was not so long or so bloody a fight as what the 
New Zealanders themselves had to encounter three days 
ago. 

The enemy struck a blow against the New Zealand troops, 
at the joining point between those men and their comrades 
on the left, who had come up to the west of Flers. 

The New Zealanders — who were Canterbury men — were 



THE SPLENDID NEW ZEALANDERS 329 

beaten back twice, and twice regained the ground. All 
through the night of September 20 until the dawn of the 
2 1 St, there was violent bomb-fighting and bayonet fighting. 
There was no straight line of men British on one side, 
German on the other. It was a confused mass, isolated 
bodies of men struggling around shell-craters and bits of 
trench, single figures fighting twos and threes, groups join- 
ing to form lines which surged backwards and forwards 
and a night horrible with the crash of bombs and the cries 
of the dying. 



One New Zealand officer, a very splendid heroic man, was 
the life and soul of this defence and counter-attack. 

There were moments when some of his men were dis- 
heartened because their line had fallen back, and the number 
of their wounded lay too thick about them. He put new 
fire into them by the flame of his own spirit. He led them 
forward again, rallying the gloomy ones, so careless of his 
own life, so eager for the honour of New Zealand that they 
followed him under a kind of spell, because of the magic 
in him. 

They thrust back the enemy, put him to flight down the 
valley, remained masters of the ground when the dawn 
brightened into the full light of day, revealing the carnage 
that had been hidden in the night. 

It was not the end of the fighting here. In the afternoon 
the enemy came again, in strong numbers — sent forward 
by their high command, men at the end of far telephones, 
desperate to retake the ground, and ordering new assaults 
which were sentences of death to German soldiers not at 
the end of far telephones but very near to British bayonets. 

They came on thickly, these doomed men, shoulder to 
shoulder, and It was again the captain of the Canterbury s 
who led his men against them in a great bayonet charge, 
right across the open. 



330 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

It was bayonet against bayonet, for the Germans stood 
to receive the charge, though with blanched faces. For the 
New Zealanders came upon them at the trot and then sprang 
forward with bayonets as quick as knitting needles. . . . 

The Germans cried out in terror. Down the hillside, be- 
yond, those who could escape ran, and fell as they ran. 
It was a rout and the end of the counter-attack. 

The New Zealanders were now sure of themselves. They 
knew that with the bayonet they can meet the Germans as 
their masters. So scornful are they of their bayonet fight- 
ing that they have it in their hearts to pity them and say 
"Poor devils!" 

To my mind, and to others, the finest heroism was shown 
by the New Zealand stretcher-bearers. They did not charge 
with the bayonet. All their duty was to go out across open 
country in cool blood to pick up men lying there in blood 
that was not cool unless they had lain there too long. 

They had to go through salvoes of five-point-nines, which 
tore up the ground about them, and buried them, and 
mangled many of them. And they went quite steadily and 
quietly, not once or twice, but hour after hour, until more 
than sixty of them had fallen, and hour after hour they car- 
ried out their work of rescue quite careless of themselves. 

"I am not a sentimentalist," said a New Zealand officer 
to-day, as he looked at me with grave eyes, remembering 
those scenes, ''but the work of those men seemed to me very 
noble and good." 

In New Zealand and in the quiet farmsteads there, those 
words will be read gladly, I think. 

And if any words of mine could give a little extra share 
of honour to these Colonial boys, who have come so far 
overseas to fight by the side of English soldiers, I should 
be glad and proud too, having a heart very full of admira- 
tion for the valour of these men, who have fought in these 
great battles as well as any troops who shared the day 
with them. 



XXXIV 
THE CANADIANS AT COURCELETTE 



I 

September 21 
In a scrappy way I have told something about the way the 
Canadians fought for Courcelette. It is worth more than 
that as an historic narrative. From first to last, beginning 
with the dawn of Friday, September 15, and going on now, 
beyond the village, against German counter-attacks, these 
men from the West have shown themselves very gallant, 
and hard and quick in fighting qualities. 

There was a body of French Canadians among them, 
dark-eyed fellows, of the same type as the French people 
among whom they found themselves by the odd chance of 
fate, like some of the French Chasseurs Alpins who have 
been fighting on our right, lithe-bodied men, with muscles 
like whipcord, full of individual character, and an old 
tradition of warfare behind them, war against nature and 
wild animals, away from town life. 

The enemy was not sure what men he had against him 
down below Courcelette. I think it was to get this knowl- 
edge that he sent out a number of his bombers just before 
the Canadian attack was to be launched. I have already 
told about the sergeant who saw them coming, and about 
the boy by his side who was buried alive by a shell, and lived 
to tell me the tale with a strange smile in his brown eyes, 
as he leaned on a crooked stick, some old tree stump he had 
picked up to support him when he was weak from loss of 
blood. He was one of the French Canadian boys. The 
German bombers came out of the darkness suddenly, and 

331 



332 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

pounced upon a bit of trench, flinging their hand-grenades, 
and trying to grab some of our men as prisoners. It was 
just like one of the old raids, better done by the Canadians 
themselves. They had a short innings, and not a man went 
back, A Canadian machine-gunner rushed up to his 
"Lewis," and killed those who came over our parapets. 
One officer with twelve bombers accounted for the others. 
But it was awkward happening just at the hour when 
the grand attack was waiting for the word "Go." It might 
have disorganised the plan at the outset. The Canadians 
did not let it make any kind of difference to them. At the 
exact moment all the waves of men rose, swept over the 
dead bodies of the raiders, and in a great tide rolled over 
No Man's Land. Three Tanks went with them, slower than 
the infantry, but climbing steadily over the trenches and the 
shell craters, and prowling around for the places from 
which there came a spitting fire of machine-guns. They 
found some of them in the Sugar Factory, and I have told 
how they sat down there, crumpling the emplacements under 
their heavy ribs, and pouring out a deadly fire. 



The Canadian Infantry had a difficult operation. The 
ground from the high ridge of Pozieres sloped down before 
them to the edge of the village of Courcelette, where they 
had been ordered to halt and consolidate while reserve bat- 
talions — the French Canadians on the right — came up be- 
hind to "mop-up" the captured ground. A German trench 
ran at an angle from their objective, and as they advanced 
the Canadians had to take this en passant, as chess-players 
would say, the flank capturing the trench at the same rate 
of progress as the centre and right went forward. 

It was done. Through machine-gun fire and an inferno 
of shrapnel and high explosives the Canadians stormed their 
way down the slope, shouting and cheering as they went, 



THE CANADIANS AT COURCELETTE 333 

led by officers who urged them on, before falHng, some of 
them, mortally wounded. In the trenches the German sol- 
diers fought stubbornly, flinging their bombs and maintain- 
ing a rapid rifle fire until the Canadians were right upon 
them with the bayonet. At the sight of sharp steel they 
fought no more, but flung up their hands. 

The Canadians had a long way to go to the outskirts of 
Courcelette, right across open country, and as they went 
the German crumps fell among them, tossing up great 
masses — as large as village churches — of smoke and earth 
filled with flying shell-splinters. 

It was on the line outside Courcelette that they stopped 
at last to dig and gather their strength and take breath. It 
was late in the afternoon, I think, that the ground behind 
them was thoroughly cleared, and that the German defence 
of the Sugar Factory was finally broken with the help of the 
Tanks. There was a conference between the officers, those 
who were still unwounded. Men in the ranks asked the 
same question, and answered it. "Why not take Courcelette 
itself?" 



The order and the honour of the new attack were given to 
the "mop-up" battalions behind, with the French Canadians 
among them, who had been advancing behind the assaulting 
troops as a clearing and consolidating force. The colonel 
of the French Canadians tells the story. He is a wiry man, 
typical of his race, modest, bright-eyed, keeping a sense of 
humour in spite of all the tragedy of war, such a man as 
Chaucer knew when Norman-French was spoken in English 
fields — "a very parfit gentil knight." 

He is proud of his French Canadians. They had a long 
way to go to get to Courcelette. Nearly three and a half 
miles to the final line given to them on the other side of the 
village. "We're late, we're late," said the little colonel. 



334 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

"We must get there in time at whatever cost. French 
Canadians, forward!" 

They were not too late. They came up to the first 
assaulting battalions — those who had dug in south of the 
village — ^just in time to pass through them and lead the 
new attack. Many men had dropped on the way. The 
ground was still being torn up by steel ploughs. All the air 
was full of the scream and whine and crash of shells. 
Round Courcelette there was a clatter of machine-gun fire 
from German hiding places. The garrison there was ready 
for defence. 

"Aliens done, mes enfants!" 

It is the way in which French officers lead their men to 
victory or to death. 

The French Canadians, with their comrades on the left, 
swung round in a loop round the southern half of the 
village, and closed in and invaded its streets. . . . The 
capture of Courcelette was one of the astounding things in 
this battle of the Somme. There were 1,500 Germans in and 
about it, and the place was stormed by much less than that 
number. Dug-outs full of Germans were routed out by a 
few men who could have been crushed and killed by the 
odds against them. One Canadian boy went down into a 
dug-out, and after a time — what queer conversation could he 
have down there? — came out again with prisoners. There 
were twenty of them, tall, big men, who could have made 
a meal off this brown-eyed lad who marshalled them up. 

Some of the Germans made themselves useful. A 
wounded Canadian officer captured five of them before too 
weak to get back to the dressing-station unaided. Speaking 
French to them, which one at least understood, he ordered 
his prisoners to make a stretcher for him, enforcing his 
command by keeping his revolver on them. From some 
old sticks and sandbags they made the stretcher, and then 
carried him down. 

Two German doctors helped to dress our wounded, and 
worked bravely and steadily under shell-fire for many 



THE CANADIANS AT COURCELETTE 335 

hours. One of them objected to having a sentry put near 
his dug-out, "I am not a fighting man," he said. "I did 
not help to make this war. My work is for humanity, and 
your wounded are the same to me as ours, poor, suffering 
men, needing my help, which I am glad to give." 



Beyond the village that night the enemy made seven coun- 
ter-attacks upon the Canadians. There were moments when 
even the Colonel thought that things did not look "too 
bright." But all these assaults were beaten off, as the Cana- 
dians have beaten off other attacks yesterday and to-day, 
inflicting heavy losses and gaining more ground. 

One counter-attack was repulsed by a handful of men 
in a way that gives a grotesque comedy to all this night 
scene of war filled with so much death and terror, and 
human courage strong in endurance. A tot of rum had 
been served out to each Canadian to give a glow of warmth 
to limbs chilled in the wet soil of shell craters and to hearts 
chilled by the reaction which follows fierce excitement. This 
handful of men were sitting in a German dug-out. 

They laughed, and sang, forgetful of the scenes about 
them. It was as jolly as in a log-cabin of the West, by this 
dug-out, where a corpse lay very quiet. Again they shouted, 
and laughed more loudly, giving Red Indian war-cries, and 
other wild whoops. And that was when the counter-attack 
began. 

It did not get very far. A body of Germans advancing 
over No Man's Land to the British lines suddenly heard 
frightful, blood-curdling sounds. It was as though the 
tribes of the Blackfeet had come out upon the war-path, 
yelling as they swung their tomahawks and dancing round 
the scalps of their victims. The Germans hated to hear 
such a noise. It was as though all the devils of hell were 
upon them, laughing diabolically. . . . They turned and 
fled. 



XXXV 
THE ABANDONMENT OF COMBLES 



I 

September 26 
The enemy cannot stand against us on his present line. 
That has been proved to-day and yesterday by sweeping 
British successes, which include the capture of Gueudecourt, 
Lesboeufs, Morval and Combles, with nearly 2,000 prisoners 
(according to my own reckoning) and a great mass of 
material. The German infantry was ordered to hold on to 
these places at all costs, to the very death. 

The enemy may pretend later that they have made a 
voluntary withdrawal to "take up a new and stronger line 
of defence" — that is the usual convention — ^but I have talked 
with their officers and men and know what their orders 
were. They were to fight for every inch of soil against 
us, and they did not lack courage. 

But our men and our guns have been too strong for them. 
As soon as we held the high ridge from the Pbzieres wind- 
mill through the old German switch line below Martinpuich, 
and above High Wood and Ginchy, their position down the 
slopes became untenable because of the new observation 
we had for our artillery. 

One by one their strongholds have fallen, Courcelette and 
Martinpuich and Flers; now those other places, Gueude- 
court, Lesboeufs and Morval. In spite of all their massed 
machine-guns in strong emplacements, and all their tunnelled 
dug-outs, and all their stubborn resistance, they could not 
hold on to a line here under the hurricane of fire our guns 

336 



THE ABANDONMENT OF COMBLES 337 

have flung upon them, and the tide of men who swept for- 
ward and overwhelmed them. 

Their defence began to show signs of cracking when 
they were unable to force home their repeated counter- 
attacks by any big general scheme of offence. 

It was clear that our constant hammer strokes, with those 
delivered by the French on our right, had demoralised and 
disorganised them, and that they were unable to gather 
reserves from other parts of the line quick enough or big 
enough to strike back heavily so as to thwart our progress. 
They had to rely mainly on their gun-power, and formidable 
as that is it has been mastered by ours for the time being, 
and could not do more than make our advance costly to our 
wonderful infantry, who went through its curtain fire. 

Even that has weakened a little during the past forty-eight 
hours — our men who come back broken by it will not think 
so, poor fellows — and the last attacks have succeeded with 
far fewer casualties on our side than ever before on such 
a day of success in this Battle of the Somme. The casual- 
ties, indeed, were very light considering the striking suc- 
cesses gained. The enemy is in retreat — not for a great 
distance, perhaps, but certainly retreating. 



For the first time in the history of this war on the western 
front since the Battle of the Marne and the beginning of 
trench warfare the enemy has been compelled to abandon a 
town without a fight in it. He has withdrawn from Com- 
bles, which is a place of some importance, and more than a 
mere village, and our troops have entered it from the north, 
while the French hold the southern half. 

As soon as Morval was taken yesterday, after that won- 
derful assault upon the double line of trenches defending 
it, his gunners near Sailly Saillisel, to the east, packed up 
and bolted away. In the night troops holding the ground 



338 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

between Morval and that place have melted away, and our 
patrols are out there trying to find out his rearguard. 

Between Gueudecourt and Lesboeufs a body of German 
infantry tried to rally up to a counter-attack and came for- 
ward a little way with a show of strength and resolution. 

Our gunners were quick to get their target. Clouds of 
shrapnel burst over those massed men, and their attack 
turned into a panic-stricken rout. They flung down rifles 
and packs and fled back towards Le Transloy, leaving many 
dead and wounded in their wake. 

The worst thing that has happened to the enemy is the 
breaking-up of the moral of his troops. These men have 
been ordered to hold out in death-traps, and although there 
can be no slur on their courage, for they have fought well 
and are brave men, they have seen with dismal eyes that if 
they hold on longer they must die or be taken. 

As soon as our men had swept across the trenches and 
the sunken roads where the Germans defended themselves 
stubbornly and entered the villages — Morval being taken 
from the north — the garrisons came up out of their under- 
ground places and surrendered in heaps. They could have 
fought longer and harder here, perhaps, but only with their 
backs to the walls asking for death. They had not the 
spirit to do that and no man would expect it of them. 

They were done and dazed by the appalling intensity of 
the shell-fire which we had smashed over their tunnels. 
They were disheartened by the unfailing regularity with 
which the British had captured one stronghold after another 
since July i, and at last after two years of utter confidence 
in the supreme strength of the German war-machine, their 
faith had been destroyed. 

They have seen it crack and break, leaving them as the 
victims of its failure. Men who have lost faith in the one 
idol to which they had pledged their souls are not so strong 
as before. It is this loss of faith among her soldiers which 
is the worst thing that has happened to Germany. 



THE ABANDONMENT OF COMBLES 339 



In opposition to the faith which we have now broken is 
the fear they have of British troops whom, once upon a 
time, they were taught to despise ; they are stupefied by the 
grim way in which our men attack, reckless of loss, so that 
no barrage stops them, and they are amazed that men who 
were not soldiers a year ago should now be equal to their 
own best troops in fighting skill as gunners and as infantry. 

A German officer who surrendered to-day with a whole 
company when the British stormed their way into Morval 
paid a tribute to them when he was taken prisoner. 

"Your soldiers," he said, "surprise me by their sangfroid. 
They were very cool and calm in moments when most 
soldiers would lose their heads." 

He was touched, too, by their kindness to him, puzzled 
by it, not finding any kind of hatred in their hearts now that 
the fighting was over. 

"They asked me whether I would like to go down at once 
or wait until the barrage eased off. That was very good- 
natured of them. Then they gave me 'kiichen' — ^little cakes 
— and called me 'old boy' as though they had known me 
before." 

They are grateful for our treatment of them, and truly 
some of our men are chivalrous in the way they behave to 
them after the bloodshed is over and the fierce and frightful 
things of battle. 

There were two fellows on the roadside to-day, an Eng- 
Hsh soldier and a German, trudging side by side to a field 
dressing station. Both heads were bandaged, and one man 
could see out of one eye and one out of the other. 

Said the Englishman: 

"This chap tried to gouge out my eye with his fist, and 
I did the same to his with my elbow, and now we get on 
famously together." 

Two other men came in — enemies an hour before. 



340 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

"This is old Bill," said the English soldier, pointing to a 
wounded German. "Where I go Bill goes. I wounded him 
and I took him. . . . Come on, Bill, old son." 

I saw 1200 German prisoners to-day just out of the battle. 
They lay in rows, grey body close to grey body, so that 
when any stood and walked about they had to step care- 
fully over all those lying men. They were men from Morval 
and Lesboeufs, and some from Combles, who in the retreat 
in the night had mistaken their way out and come into our 
lines. 

They were mostly strong, well-built young men — better 
than some of those I saw yesterday — and were nearly all 
Prussians from the Rhinelands. In the mass there was 
nothing repulsive about them, though here and there was 
an evil-looking face. These fresh-coloured fellows, very 
smart and soldierly, and with very little of the dirt of war 
upon them, as they had been living in the dug-outs, stared 
about them with curious eyes^ — at the British troops passing 
and British transports, and all the traffic that goes up to 
the battle lines. They were startled at finding themselves in 
so great a company of fellow-prisoners. They confessed 
to one of our officers that it was "a great British victory." 

These men were all unwounded. But in a tent not far 
away, and in other tents, were rows of Germans on stretch- 
ers, lying very still, and looking very grey, in blood-soaked 
clothes. Some of them were moaning their lives away, but 
English doctors were with them, attending to them just in 
the same way as they dealt with our wounded men carried 
into other tents. 

"We make no difference," said the medical officer. 

There was a young officer there whom I had met yes- 
terday on the roadside. He sat up when he saw me again, 
and said he wanted nothing that could be given to him, and 
was grateful for the treatment. He had just been writing 
down the address of one of his wounded comrades, who was 
going to die, so that he might send a letter to the man's wife. 



THE ABANDONMENT OF COMBLES 341 

He had been asked to do this by one of the English doc- 
tors, and he was glad to do it. 

I sat down by the side of a young soldier from the Rhine- 
land. 

"Are you badly wounded?" I asked. 

He pointed to his shoulder, and said "Here." 

When I said he looked very young, he shrugged that 
wounded shoulder of his, and said, "All my comrades were 
young. We fought as well as older men. The English came 
behind us, or we would not have been taken." 

The pride of the boy remained with him even now, and it 
seemed to me fine and plucky. 

But these men, as a whole, have none of the braggart 
confidence of the prisoners we used to take a year ago. The 
truth, I think, is beginning to dawn upon them. The guns 
that protected them have been matched by British guns, and 
the new army that has grown up against them has broken 
their strongest lines. 

It is only the beginning. People at home must not think 
that the German army has lost its power of defence and 
that the great rout is at hand. They are drawing back their 
guns, but saving most of them. They are retreating, but 
will stand again, and dig new trenches and defend other 
villages. 

There Vv^ill be greater and fiercer and more desperate fight- 
ing before the end comes, and God alone knows when that 
will be. But so far as the fighting goes it is a real stroke of 
victory for us. Within the last forty-eight hours we have 
put out of action eight German battalions between Lesboeufs 
and Morval, and the enemy can ill afford such loss after all 
that has happened since the first day of July. 



The story of the meeting of the French and British in the 
stronghold of Combles is an historic incident, which may 
form one day the subject of a great painting, though per- 



84S THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

haps no artist's eye was there to see it. Some brigades of 
English troops were holding on Monday morning, the 
ground of the Quadrilateral (where our men had been 
badly held up on September 15), to the west of Bouleaux 
Wood. 

The French were hammering forward with their soixante- 
quinze and masses of splendid infantry to the east of Com- 
bles in the direction of Fregicourt. The plan of attack was 
to box in Combles by the French advance on one side, and 
on ours by forming a strong line to the north-west of Com- 
bles. 

The operation was of great importance to the whole of 
our attack on Morval" and Lesboeufs on Monday morning, 
because, apart from cutting off Combles, the new position 
was needed as a solid plank to our right wing. 

The men who were given the task — it is sad that I am not 
yet able to say who they were — ^had been fighting heavily in 
previous battles, and had suffered many losses. But for 
this new assault they rallied up again with a brave spirit, 
and did all that was asked of them and a little more. 

Instead of attacking Bouleaux Wood itself, where the 
Germans were in great force, they were ordered to take 
two lines of trenches on the west side of it, and to establish 
the flank line there — a clever bit of strategy which a German 
officer has since complained of bitterly as "not playing the 
game." Because at Bouleaux Wood the Germans were 
waiting for an attack and ready for it with massed machine- 
guns, which they could not put to their full use, poor lads ! 

The trenches were taken easily and rapidly — in five min- 
utes from the moment of attack — ^but nearly at right angles 
to it was an embankment with a rabbit warren of dug-outs, 
which gave more trouble. 

It was the German flank line, and enormously important 
to the enemy, so that he held it with a large force of men 
and many machine-guns and minenwerfer. 

Fierce, savage fighting took place here, and it was only 
four hours later that the dug-outs were finally cleared. 



THE ABANDONMENT OF COMBLES 343 

Hereabouts eighty prisoners were taken, but a great many 
dead bodies lay below the embankment when the fight was 
done. 

Near by five minenwerfer were captured, and our men 
found some empty gun emplacements, which had been aban- 
doned in such a hurry by the German gunners that they 
had left behind them a great store of four-point-two shells 
and all their ammunition carriers. 

Our strong flank was formed and a new trench dug in 
great style by a pioneer battalion, and then in the darkness 
patrols of infantry pushed forward in the direction of 
Combles. It was dark, yet not an absolute and lasting dark- 
ness. The sky was very calm and strewn with bright stars, 
and up above the Combles road at Morval white flares went 
up and down, throwing every few moments a white, vivid 
glare over the battlefield, lighting up its desolation, with the 
rim of every shell-crater white as snow and with black pits 
in the depths of them. 

The sky was not quiet except high above the strife of 
men. Away down the French lines it was all on fire, and 
shells were bursting in a great semi-circle where the British 
were fighting at Lesboeufs and Gueudecourt. 

But Combles was dark and quiet. No star-shells came up 
from its ruined houses. There was no sign of life there, 
only a few black shadows came up from the town towards 
our patrols and exchanged shots with them and then tried to 
escape. Twenty of these stragglers were taken prisoner. 
Ten were killed in fights with our patrol parties. 

Hour after hour there was the tremendous tattoo of the 
French soixante-quinze coming nearer and nearer, and a 
final outburst of gun and rifle fire when Fregicourt was 
taken. 

The night was passing, but it was long before dawn — at 
3.15 — ^when a strong patrol of English soldiers with ma- 
chine-guns advanced down a tramline into the town of 
Combles. They were tired men, worn with fighting, craving 
sleep, hating all this hell around them, not in that night 



344 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

hour inspired by any thrill of joy because they were enter- 
ing Combles "in triumph." They were not quite sure how 
far the beastly place had been abandoned. News had come 
to them that the enemy had found a way out. 

But you never can tell. There might be desperate fellows 
in the cellars, machine-guns behind any of these broken 
walls. They went on slowly and cautiously until they 
reached the ruined streets. 

Dead men lay about, with white faces turned upwards to 
the stars. The ground was littered with broken bricks and 
twisted iron and destroyed wagons. But no shot came 
through the gaping holes in houses which still stood as roof- 
less shells. It was all as quiet and still as death. A halt 
was made at the railway line, and then our tired men saw 
through the gloom other tired figures trudging towards 
them. 

Officers went forward. Words were spoken in French 
and English : 

"Ce sont les Anglais." 

"Them's the French all right." 

"The blooming town's abandoned." 

"Les sacres Boches n'existent plus!" 

Combles was taken thus in the early hours of the morn- 
ing of the day before yesterday without any demonstration 
or dramatic ceremony, without cheers or theatrical nonsense, 
by grim, quiet, tired men who were glad to be at the end 
of another day's fighting, with a dog's chance of rest. 

It was a great place for booty. The cellars were stacked 
with thousands of rifles and a great store of ammunition. 
The enemy had left behind four thousand rounds of five- 
point-nine shells — the less to fire at us, thank God ! — and a 
mass of material and kit of every kind. 

This flight from Combles is the most ignominious thing 
that has happened to the enemy on the Western front since 
he was hammered back on the Marne, and it must have hurt 
his pride — the pride of his "High Command" — as a smart- 
ing wound. 



XXXVI 
THE DOOM OF THIEPVAL 



I 

September 2y 
The doom of Thiepval is fulfilled. That place upon the 
high ridge, with its thirty- four black tree-stumps — I counted 
them this morning — which has been harrowed and ploughed 
and cratered under incessant storms of high explosive, fell 
into our hands last evening — all but one corner to the north- 
west, which is ours to-day. 

Weeks ago I said — as it may be remembered — that the 
German garrison there must have known that their doom 
was creeping nearer, and that sooner or later they must 
surrender or die. 

It was longer reaching them than I expected when I 
watched the attack on the Zollern trench, and the defences 
running up to the Wunderwerk, and saw our men crossing 
a wide stretch of No Man's Land through great shell-fire 
which tossed up the earth about them, and go on until those 
who had not fallen leapt upon the German trenches and 
bundled back batches of prisoners, and then went on again 
until they were very near to the row of apple trees which 
used to blossom in April on the outskirts of Thiepval town 
perched upon the hill. 

It seemed to me then, watching the rapid progress of our 
men and their wonderful courage, that in a few days more 
from the Wunderwerk and Mouquet Farm on the east side 
our lines would close in and put the strangle-grip upon the 
place. 

It has taken longer than that, more storms of shells, more 

345 



346 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

splendid lives, to win the stronghold, and the wonder to me 
is, now that I know the full strength of the place, the 
resistance of its underground fortifications, and the fighting 
spirit of the troops holding it, that we captured it yesterday 
and to-day with such little loss. 

For our loss was amazingly light considering the long and 
stubborn fighting there and the machine-gun fire which 
swept upon our men from many hidden places, and the 
desperation of the garrison who defended themselves with 
great gallantry. Let us give them the honour of saying that, 
for they were fine fighting men. 

In defence the advantage was all with them. But for the 
power of our guns and the way in which British troops 
fight — meaning to win whatever the cost — they were in an 
impregnable position. The taking of Mouquet Farm by the 
Australians and afterwards by the Canadians was the worst 
menace to them, enclosing them on the right, but an as- 
tounding episode which happened yesterday will show most 
clearly the difficulties of our troops and the cunning of the 
enemy's earthworks. 



It is many days since I reported the final capture of Mou- 
quet Farm, after in and out fighting, and since I saw its 
ruins from the high ridge. 

These bits of broken brickwork, all that was left after 
the Australians had made it their own, were the remnants 
of a place more important once than an ordinary French 
farmstead. 

It was a series of buildings such as one finds in France 
attached to a big chateau, with barns and out-houses and 
stables, or to an old monastic institution, covering a large 
space of ground. 

Our last line of trenches struck through the middle of 
the place, leaving two bits of ruin to the north of the trench 
and one to the south, behind the line. The enemy seemed 



THE DOOM OF THIEPVAL SVt 

to be well away northwards in the shell-craters beyond our 
parapet, and nobody suspected "Brother Boche" near at 
hand. 

It was with great surprise a few days ago that one of our 
English officers saw two Germans rise suddenly from a hole 
behind our line, near the southern ruin of bricks. 

One of them beckoned to him. "Be careful, sir," said the 
sentry. But the officer imagined that the two Germans had 
strayed into our lines and wanted to be taken prisoner, as 
some do from time to time. 

He went forward slowly until he was quite close to them. 
Then he fell dead, shot by the man who had beckoned to 
him, who with his comrade disappeared immediately into 
some hole which could not be found. 

A day or two later a working party digging in the neigh- 
bourhood broke through to a deep tunnel. Instead of 
searching it there and then they filled it up again. Our men 
found themselves being sniped from other holes in the 
ground. It came into the heads of our officers that beneath 
the ground, even behind our lines, were nests of Germans 
who might turn upon them at any moment, or blow them up 
by a charge of guncotton. 

Orders were given to draw back a little from Mouquet 
Farm, and the guns were turned on it again, flinging high 
explosives and shrapnel over the place, as in the old days. 
Then some of our men were sent forward to clear the 
trenches, if they could find them. They came back without 
success. So the place remained one of our "mystery cor- 
ners" until yesterday, when the attack was to begin on 
Thiepval, from the trenches south, and swinging left from 
Mouquet. It was dangerous, but it was decided to carry out 
the attack without worrying about the underground inhabi- 
tants. 

The attack on Thiepval began, and instantly our men on 
the right had advanced beyond the farm to the Zollern 
trench parties of grey-coats came out of the tunnels of Mou- 



348 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

quet and began firing machine-guns into the backs of the 
British soldiers. 

By good luck there was a young British officer not far, 
away who kept his head on his shoulders, and had a quick 
way of dealing with a situation of this kind. He was in 
charge of a working party, but he saw his chance of a 
"scrap." "Come on, boys!" he shouted. "Never mind 
your shovels." His men threw down their tools and fol- 
lowed him. 

I don't know how many there were of them, but only 
thirteen came back. They did not come back ingloriously. 
They brought with them one German officer and fifty-five 
men as prisoners, and there were no living men left at six 
o'clock last night in the tunnels of Mouquet. 

It was only a small episode in the rear of the assault on 
Thiepval, but extraordinary, and not without importance, 
on the right wing of our advance, for men do not like to 
go forward with machine-gun fire from behind. It shows 
the way in which the ground all about here has been used 
for subterranean fighting. 



So it was in Thiepval. Above ground there was nothing 
to see to-day, and for a long time, but the black and broken 
tree-trunks with their lopped branches high above Thiepval 
Wood, which is just as utterly destroyed — those bare poles, 
and to the left a mass of reddish brickwork which was 
once Thiepval chateau, and, standing solitary, a queer- 
shaped monster, looking like a sleeping megatherium, which 
I recognised as an old Tank on the warpath. 

No men could have remained alive above ground yester- 
day when our guns hurled upon it a stream of heavy shells 
which burst all over the site of the village with violent 
upheavals of earth and vast clouds of curly black smoke 
filled with death. 

The German garrison kept below, in a long series of 



THE DOOM OF THIEPVAL 349 

vaults and tunnels which they had strengthened and linked 
up, and dug deeper, in a way that would have surprised the 
old French farmers who used to keep their wine and stores 
down there centuries ago. They had made many exits, so 
that they could pop up with rifles and machine-guns at many 
spots between the four corners of the village, and they were 
ready for another British attack. 

I know these things because I have been talking with the 
German survivors of the garrison. They were nearly all 
men of the i8oth Regiment, and they have held Thiepval 
for two years. 

"In the old days," said one of them this morning — he 
talked very frankly to me in excellent French — "the place 
was quiet and happy. We had no great comfort below 
ground, no fancy furniture or fine decorations (our beds 
were just wooden planks raised above the ground) ; but we 
worked hard to fortify the vaults. We pierced many new 
tunnels. We made this underground world perfectly safe, 
and we were proud of it." 

It belonged so much to the i8oth Regiment that instead 
of being relieved in the ordinary way like other troops, and 
sent off to different parts of the front, they were given the 
honour of defending Thiepval since the beginning of the 
Battle of the Somme. The regiment arranged its own re- 
liefs company by company, Bapaume being their rest 
camp. The men I met to-day had been actually in Thiepval 
only seven days, without relief, and had guessed that it 
would be their turn to defend the place against a great Eng- 
lish assault. They had pledged themselves to defend it to 
the death. 

Before telling the narrative of our attack and the adven- 
tures of our own men I think it is interesting to give this 
glimpse of the defenders, of their life underground. When 
I talked with them this morning they had just been cap- 
tured. I was struck by the superior bearing and intelligence 
of them all. 

They were certainly the best type of Germans I have seen 



350 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

on this front — Wiirttembergers all, and handsome fellows, 
who had kept their spirit — one of the last groups of men 
who fought against us in the early days, and survivors of 
the first-line troops of the German army who have fallen like 
autumn leaves upon the battlefields of Europe, in the endless 
massacre of this war. 

They are weary of the war, like all their troops. They 
laughed when I asked "Will England win?" and would not 
pretend that Germany is still victorious. They had heard 
of the downfall of the two Zeppelins in England, "Kaput," 
as they called it, and had all the news that is given to Ger- 
man people by the newspapers which they had every day — 
even yesterday! — in their underground dwelling-place at 
Thiepval. But they were not dupes of false news. 

"Do you believe the British Fleet is destroyed ?" I asked, 
testing them. "The English Fleet is too great to be de- 
stroyed," they said. "We did not believe all those stories. 
But we gave you a good fight at sea." 

They gave us a good fight on land, and underground, this 
garrison of Thiepval, and with a few exceptions they fought 
honourably, so that our men have no grudge against them 
now that they are prisoners of war. 



Our attack began yesterday at half -past twelve after a 
great bombardment that had been continuous for twenty- 
four hours, rising to infernal heights of shell-fire. Our men 
leapt out of their trenches to the south of the trees, just 
north of the "Wunderwerk," and advanced in waves up to 
the trench by the row of apple trees, the right wing swinging 
round, as I have said, from Mouquet. 

It was on the left that the men had the hardest time. 
One battalion leading the assault had to advance directly 
upon the chateau, that heap of red rubbish, and from cellars 
beneath it came waves of savage machine-gun fire. They 



THE DOOM OF THIEPVAL 351 

were also raked by an enfilade fire of machine-guns from the 
left top corner of the ground where the village once stood. 

Our men were astounded. 

"I didn't believe it possible," said one of them, "that any 
living soul could be there after all that shell-fire. But 
blessed as soon as it switched off if the Germans didn't come 
up like rabbits out of bunnyholes and fire most hellishly." 

For a long time it was impossible to get near the chateau 
or take a trench dug in front of it. It was a chateau once 
belonging to a German. French gossip said that he had 
tunnelled it for such a defence as that of yesterday, which 
is a fantastic tale, but its cellars stood now, and were a 
strong place from which one party of the garrison poured 
out a stream of lead. 

"Where are the old Tanks ?" shouted our men, and stared 
back to catch a glimpse of them. 

It is splendid to see the smiles spreading over our men's 
faces every time they talk of the Tank, Whatever their 
sufferings have been they cheer up and laugh in a comical 
way at this thought, for the Tank is a wonderfully fine tonic 
to the spirits of our men and an outrageous comedy thrust- 
ing a blunt nose into the grim business of this fighting. 

A Tank had been coming along slowly in a lumbering 
way, crawling over the interminable succession of shell- 
craters, lurching over and down into and out of old Ger- 
man trenches, nosing heavily into soft earth, and grunting 
up again, and sitting poised on broken parapets as though 
quite winded by this exercise, and then waddling forward 
in the wake of the infantry. Then it faced the ruins of the 
chateau, and stared at them very steadily for quite a long 
time, as though wondering whether it should eat them or 
crush them. Our men were hiding behind ridges of shell- 
craters, keeping low from the swish of machine-gun bullets, 
and imploring the Tank to "get on with It." 

Then it moved forward, in a monstrous way, not swerv- 
ing much to the left or right, but heaving itself on jerkily, 
like a dragon with indigestion, but very fierce. Fire leapt 



352 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

from its nostrils. The German machine-guns splashed its 
sides with bullets, which ricocheted off. Not all those bul- 
lets kept it back. It got on top of the enemy's trench, 
trudged down the length of it, laying its sandbags flat and 
sweeping it with fire. 

The German machine-guns were silent, and when our men 
followed the Tank, shouting and cheering, they found a 
few German gunners standing with their hands up as a sign 
of surrender to the monster who had come upon them. 

"We couldn't have faced the chateau without the help of 
the old Tank," said several men. "It didn't care a damn for 
machine-guns. It did them in properly." 

Unfortunately the great grasshopper got into trouble with 
some part of its mysterious anatomy, and had to rest before 
crawling home to its lair, so that the rest of the fighting in 
Thiepval was without this powerful support, and our in- 
fantry faced many other machine-guns alone. 



I suppose only Ovillers can rank with Thiepval for long 
and close fighting. Our men had to tackle an underground 
foe, who fired at them out of holes and crevices while they 
remained hidden. 

They had to burrow for them, dive down into dark- 
entries, fight in tunnels, get their hands about the throats of 
men who suddenly sprang up to them out of the earth. 

"I went down into some of those deep dug-outs," said one 
boy, "but ran back again every time I saw Germans there. 
Some of them wanted to surrender, but how did I know if 
they wouldn't have killed me ? And other chaps were com- 
ing along with bombs. As likely as not I should have been 
done in by our own lads. It was very difficult to know how 
to handle 'em, and up above we were being raked by rifles 
and machine-guns something frightful." 

Many of the deep dug-outs were blown in at the entrances, 



THE DOOM OF THIEPVAL 353 

so that the men were forced to come up the other side. 
Our men smoked them out, and dug holes for them to tease 
them out. It was hke rat-hunting, but dangerous rats, hfe- 
size, and often desperate. They surrendered in hundreds 
when our men were all round them and right down in their 
tunnels. 

I cannot tell the number of the German garrison. Nine 
hundred and ninety-eight unwounded men and forty 
wounded were brought down safely as prisoners, but others 
were killed on the way by their own barrage, and many 
fought until they died, so that some of the dug-outs are filled 
with dead and many lie above in the shell-craters. In one 
case a party of sixteen prisoners behaved treacherously. 

They turned on the escort of two English soldiers taking 
them down, wounded them, and tried to go back to fight. 
They had no mercy from other English soldiers who came 
up at this moment. All through the night and early this 
morning the last remnant of the garrison held out in the 
north-west comer of Thiepval, until they were swept into 
the net by a separate and gallant assault of South Country 
troops. 

Later in the morning the enemy attempted a counter- 
attack after a tremendous barrage which I watched falling 
along the ridge and below in Thiepval Wood. Very-lights 
rose through all this smoke, and I saw our men signalling 
for the help of our guns. 

The help came quickly, and a new storm of white and 
black smoke-clouds rent by little flashes of flame burst be- 
yond the village on to the German positions in and beyond 
the cemetery. 

It was queer that this seemed to silence the enemy's guns, 
for after this Thiepval was quiet for a time, and our men 
came poking about in the open as though looking for sou- 
venirs, and dug new holes down into the tunnels. 

They seemed to be teasing out more prisoners, because I 
saw trails of smoke rising from those holes in the earth, 



354 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

and one black volume gushed out of a cavern mouth made 
through the heap of red rubbish which was once the chateau. 



I have no space or time to deal with many events on other 
parts of the line, but everywhere the enemy is harassed, and 
his troops do not seem able yet to rally up to strong counter- 
attacks. In many parts of the line patrols find it difficult to 
locate the enemy, and No Man's Land is widening out. His 
guns were active to-day along all the line, shelling Combles 
now and then, and Morval heavily, but even his gun-power 
seems to be weakening here and there, and it is likely that 
he is shifting some of his batteries. 

One of the most remarkable Tank adventures was in the 
direction of Gueudecourt where our troops were held up 
yesterday in the usual way, that is to say by the raking fire 
of machine-guns. They made two attacks, but could not 
get beyond that screen of bullets. 

Then a Tank strolled along, rolled over the trench, with 
fire flashing from its flanks, and delivered it into the hands 
of the infantry with nearly 400 prisoners, who waved white 
flags above the parapet. That was not all. The Tank, ex- 
hilarated by this success, went lolloping along the way in 
search of new adventures. It went quite alone, and only 
stopped for minor repairs when it was surrounded by a 
horde of German soldiers. These men closed upon it, with 
great pluck, for it was firing in a most deadly way, and tried 
to kill it. 

They flung bombs at it, clambered on to its back, and tried 
to smash it with the butt-ends of rifles, jabbed it with bayo- 
nets, fired revolvers and rifles at it, and made a wild pande- 
monium about it. 

Then our infantry arrived, attracted by the tumult of this 
scene, and drove the enemy back. But the Tank had done 
deadly work, and between 200 and 300 killed and wounded 



THE DOOM OF THIEPVAL 355 

Germans lay about its ungainly carcass. For a little while 
it seemed that the Tank also was out of action, but after a 
little attention and a good deal of grinding and grunting, it 
heaved itself up and waddled away. 

These things sound incredible. . . . They are true. And 
though I write them in fantastic style because that is really 
the nature of the thing, it must not be forgotten that these 
Tanks are terrible engines of war, doing most grim work, 
and that the men inside are taking high risks with astonish- 
ing courage. 

They are of the same breed as those flying men of ours 
who to-day and yesterday flew in flocks over and beyond 
Thiepval "ridiculously low down," as one of our officers 
observed, swooping down like hawks over German batteries 
so that they did not dare to fire. All our soldiers are fighting 
with a spirit beyond the normal laws of human nature. 
They are fighting for a quick finish — if that may be had 
by courage — to this most infamous and vile war. 



XXXVII 

NORTHWARD FROM THIEPVAL 



II 

September 28 
The weather is still in our favour — and soldiers watch the 
weather like seamen in frail craft, knowing that two days 
of heavy rain, or less than that, may make a month's differ- 
ence in the progress of attack, and that when mist gathers 
over the hills airmen cannot see to report to the guns, and 
guns cannot shoot on certain targets, and enemy troops may 
come creeping up to a counter-attack. 

One of his battalions was spotted by our airmen to-day, 
and our artillery found the range quickly and scattered 
them. It puts them into the same villainous plight as our 
men have had to endure under the brow of the Messines 
and Wyghtschaete ridges and other high ground from which 
the enemy could see the slightest movement of our troops 
and would snipe even a solitary wagon with shell-fire. 

The tables are turned down here by the Somme and the 
Ancre. The German soldiers will know now the devilish 
torture of living always under hostile observation, and 
under great guns. They are already beginning to find it 
intolerable, not "sticking" it as our men "stuck" it in the 
salient, when we had hardly any guns to answer back. 

A further gain of ground was made yesterday on the 
high ridge where Thiepval stood when our men captured a 
strong line of trenches known as the Stuff Redoubt, and 
again to-day when they advanced northwards from the 
black trees of Thiepval to the Schwaben Redoubt, which is 
on the edge of the plateau. 

356 



NORTHWARD FROM THIEPVAL 357 

This attack at midday to-day was similar to other opera- 
tions which I have described on this part of the front before. 
A large number of batteries concentrated intense, violent fire 
upon the position beyond the last blighted trees on the ridge 
and on the upheaved lines of soil, of white chalk and brown 
earth, which marked the enemy's next defensive system. 

Our heavy shells tore up the ground, opening great 
chasms and raising hell fires, until all the blue of the sky 
was hidden behind heavy spreading smoke, gushing up in 
round, dense masses which mingled and thickened the over- 
hanging pall. 

Then our guns lengthened their range, and our infantry 
trudged across through this fog and under the wild scream 
of shells flung beyond them, and fought their way down 
into the enemy's ditches. Later, after signals of distress, 
the German gunners barraged the line of the Schwaben Re- 
doubt, which seemed to prove the successful advance of our 
men, and ranged their heavies on to Thiepval itself as we 
did until the day before yesterday, when it changed hands. 

The industry of the men who lived there first — that i8oth 
regiment which has held Thiepval for two years^ — is now of 
use to our own soldiers, who can find ample and shell-proof 
cover in those underground rooms, one of them, at least, 
large enough to hold three companies of men. 

I am not certain at this hour whether we hold the whole 
of the Schwaben Redoubt, but if not all, the rest will be 
taken quickly, and the whole of the high pleateau will be 
ours from Thiepval to Ginchy old telegraph. 

Meanwhile on the right we hold a firm straight line, down 
from Gueudecourt to Combles, and it forms a solid flank. 



2 

September 30 
It is here beyond Thiepval that the slaughter of men is 
greatest just now — the scene of the shambles changes 
quickly these days — and here that the enemy is sacrificing 



S58 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

many more lives in the vain hope of driving our men back 
from the underground fortress and its surrounding re- 
doubts. 

Desperate German counter-attacks were made last night 
and this morning on the Schwaben Redoubt, just north of 
Thiepval, and on the Hessian Redoubt, further east, where 
the German troops hold out in a wedge made by a sunken 
road from Grandcourt. 

I have not often heard such a menace in the sound of 
gun-fire as when I went to an artillery O.P. in this direction 
this morning. There was something in the atmosphere as 
well as in the intensity of the bombardment which made 
the shell-bursts — they were German crumps — thunder out 
in a queer, hollow, reverberating way. 

The enemy had concentrated a heavy weight of metal on 
to our lines here (so recently his own), and I watched these 
high explosives vomiting up from the Thiepval ridge, just 
below the Schwaben Redoubt, with a great hope that our 
men holding out there might have found good cover in old 
German dug-outs. 

That is one advantage gained in capturing these strong- 
holds. The enemy's industry through two years of trench 
warfare may be turned to our own good and safety. In 
Thiepval itself many of the elaborate underground chambers 
have now been found, though when our men first won the 
place, after all their hard hand-to-hand fighting with the 
garrison they could not get to cover at once. 

A major belonging to one of the battalions who came up 
first behind the assaulting troops — New Army men who 
fought like the old Regulars, though many of them were 
quite new to this fortress fighting — tells me that the entry 
into Thiepval was the most devilish experience he has had, 
though he has been through other frightful "shows." 

A dug-out next to a hole in which he had made his tem- 
porary headquarters was blown up with sixteen men, and 
when he moved on beyond the chateau — a fine name for 
the only rubbish heap which marked the site of a town — he 



NORTHWARD FROM THIEPVAL 359 

found the headquarters of the leading battalion "sitting on 
red bricks" in the midst of dead men. 

By that time his colonel and adjutant had been badly 
wounded, and the major arrived with only three runners, 
surprised to see the CO. of the other battalion standing 
up on the brick heap waving his stick and rallying his men. 

It is not really surprising. I met that officer to-day, and 
I saw the ice-cold fervour of the man, the quiet determina- 
tion of his character, utterly scornful of any kind of danger. 
Men would follow such a man into furnace fires — and did. 

The enemy was six hours before he began to get his bar- 
rage fixed (before then he was not quite sure of his own 
soldiers' whereabouts) and it was colossal when it came. 
Many of our men lay about wounded. It was difficult to 
get them into safety. 

The medical officer of one of the battalions lost his 
stretcher-bearers and went up alone to do what he could, 
dodging great shells, binding up the wounds of men. 

For a time a Tank gave valuable cover. It had heaved 
itself across a trench, enfilading it each side with deadly fire. 
Underneath its body there was good shelter, and the M.O. 
worked here for a while with a heap of wounded. 

The fighting on the north-east of Thiepval is in a land 
of shell-craters. Most of the trenches are just linked shell- 
craters, into which men burrow as soon as they have rushed 
the ground, getting a little cover in their depths from the 
barrage which searches them out. 

The Hessian trench has changed hands several times with- 
in the last forty-eight hours, after savage bomb-fights and 
bayonet work. Forty Germans have been brought in from 
one bit of ground, but it is not country in which prisoners 
are gathered in great numbers. It is difficult to know one's 
own whereabouts. 

There are single combats over the rim of a shell-hole. 
Men knock up against each other in the dark, and peer into 
each other's faces to know if it is friend or foe. If friend 



360 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

they drop into a shell-hole together; if foe, fight till one is 
dead. 



Queer things happen in shell-crater land, as when a Cana- 
dian officer brought up the rum ration for his men, and 
found himself in a ditch with a number of German wounded. 
They were lying in a row, in a tragic state. 

What was the officer to do? He was puzzled, but de- 
cided to give the rum to these poor suffering devils, who 
were grateful for it. 

In the Hessian trench or in a twist of the crater-land 
about it, two German officers and twenty-two men came 
down across the holes. They were met by a private soldier, 
who was surprised to see them. He emptied his revolver 
at them, shooting one of them. 

Then he picked up a German rifle and fired that and killed 
another. A second time he stopped and grasped a German 
rifle at his feet, and killed a third man. The others ran. 
Our man ran after them. 

It was a chase along a dirty ditch which had once been 
a trench, and the hunter was a dead shot, with abandoned 
rifles, all along the way. At the end of the hunt there was 
only one German unwounded, and he was brought back as 
a prisoner. 

It sounds like a lie — preposterous in the numbers given. 
But the German prisoner tells the same tale, and other men 
watched the hunt at different stages — this fearful man-hunt 
down a bloody ditch. 



Things happen like that in this present fighting. Worse 
than that in human anguish, and better than that in courage. 
Out in crater-land were found three Australians in a hole. 

One of them was unwounded, the other two rotting with 



NORTHWARD FROM THIEPVAL 361 

wounds. They had been there for nine days. The un- 
wounded man had stayed with his "pals" all that time, day 
after day, night after night, hoping for rescue. This part 
of crater-land was swept with machine-gun fire — ours or 
the enemy's, how could these men tell who had lost all sense 
of direction? — but at night the unwounded Australian 
crawled out of his hole and rummaged among dead bodies 
for rations and water-bottles, which he took back to his 
friends and shared with them. 

It is only one incident of the kind. In crater-land there 
are many like it, though not so long-drawn. But it is the 
enemy who suffers most out there. 

Many times men left to hold a line against us do not get 
their reliefs, for the reliefs cannot get up through our cur- 
tain-fire or will not come. 

So the others, starving and wounded, crawl back, leaving 
a trail of dead on the way, and for a time, here and there, 
the enemy has disappeared before us, so that when our 
patrols push out they can find no living man. 

Then, after a while, the reliefs come up, dodging our 
shell-fire, leaving another trail of dead and wounded, and 
then dropping into shell-holes inhabited by corpses. 

It is the way of the war, about which the orators have 
much to say, not knowing quite the meaning of it. Herr 
Bethmann-Hollweg has not seen his men in crater-land. 



5 

October 4 

A little romance clings to old buildings, even the remnant 

of a wall or two, so that a place like Eaucourt 1' Abbaye — the 

ruin of a French monastery — seems of greater importance 

than a heap of earth and a network of ditches like the 

Schwaben or Hessian redoubts. It is of no more importance 

( I suppose less, except as another stepping-stone on the way 

to Bapaume), but it is the scene of fighting which has a 

special interest because of those old bricks built up centu- 



362 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

ries ago by French monks to enclose a place of prayer and 
peaceful work. 

On Monday last, when the fighting began, two monsters 
came crawling up to the ditches which had been dug by the 
fighting men outside the monastery walls. They breathed 
out smoke and fire. Their sides opened with stabs of flame, 
and they killed the men in the ditches by rolling on them 
and crushing them, and hurling invisible bolts at them. 

The ghosts of the monks, if any were there, would have 
seen that modern warfare has brought back the mediaeval 
dragon-myth, and made it real, and more terrible than super- 
stition. They were the Tanks who came. 

One could write all this fantastically and make a queer 
tale of it. The truth is fantastic, but one must write it 
soberly, because they were British boys who have given 
their lives or a little of their blood to get these bits of wall 
called Eaucourt I'Abbaye, with its vaults and cellars. To 
them it was not like an old fairy-tale, but was just one of 
those grim bits of fighting, damnably dangerous and ugly 
and cheerless, which belong to the Battle of the Somme. 

The first part I have already told, two days ago, how our 
men, in their attack on the double line of trenches outside 
the monastery, were checked by barbed wire and machine- 
guns, and two Tanks came to the rescue. One of them, 
after doing useful work, came to a stop, and the skipper 
came out and, after doing most gallant service, was 
wounded. 

Three of the crew put him into a shell-crater and would 
not leave him. A day later he was wounded again by a 
bomb, which — amazing as it seems — did not burst, but in- 
jured him badly in the ribs, so that he had to endure great 
suffering out there in the crater. 

Our infantry passed over the trenches and through the 
monastery ruins and dug a new ditch on the north side for 
defence and cover. Heavy rain came and drenched them 
and swamped the ditch. They were cold and wet and 
hungry. 



NORTHWARD FROM THIEPVAL 363 

For a time it was impossible to get food up to them. 
The ground behind was a quagmire for miles. The carriers 
became bogged. That little body of men to the north of 
the abbey were dangerously isolated, and might have starved 
but for the help of troops on their right who discovered their 
needs and sent food. 

That was on Monday night. To the best of their belief 
the enemy was in force all round them. They could see 
flares going up, at Warlencourt, and from a primeval burial 
ground, about forty feet high, called the Butte de Warlen- 
court, just north of them, and they could hear the snap 
of rifle bullets from close shell-craters and the rat-tat-tat of 
a machine-gun from a millhouse 300 yards away, north- 
west. 

From what our men learnt yesterday, there was an hour 
or two at least when they had only a few Germans in the 
close neighbourhood of the Abbey. 

The enemy's troops were expecting their relief. When 
they found that the reliefs did not come up they cursed the 
war and the weather — they were as wet and hungry as our 
men — and decided to go back without further waiting. Only 
a few snipers and machine-gunners stayed. 

Such things have happened before in the enemy's lines as 
I have already described. It was given away this time by a 
body of twenty men with an officer and non-commissioned 
officer, who' came down past the mill-house and took cover 
under a bank close to the abbey buildings. 

They were seen by our men, who crept out towards them 
with a machine-gun, and then shouted "Hands up !" Twenty 
men held up their hands. The officer and the "unter-offizier" 
did not surrender, but ran hard back and made their es- 
cape, unless two of our bullets reached them. 

The twenty men told their tale. They belonged to the 
battalion who had been sent up to relieve the troops holding 
the outskirts of the Abbey. They had found no one to re- 
ceive them or to explain the lie of the land. They had not 



364 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

the slightest notion of the amount of ground held by the 
English here. 

Other bodies of the relieving troops were just as ignorant. 
Some of them blundered against trenches held by our men 
on the right of the Abbey, and were dealt with by them. 

Meanwhile a telephone message had been sent to our ar- 
tillery, which flung out a barrage and caught more of the 
relief coming down from Warlencourt. 

In spite of their horrible mess, the men who got through 
the barrage were bold fellows and attacked the abbey and 
the trenches south of it. They had a new supply of bombs 
and used them freely. Our men were sadly at a disad- 
vantage. Bombs were very scarce. 

A dump had exploded by accident, sending their store to 
blazes. They had to fight with what they carried on their 
bodies, and it was not enough. For a time they had to 
submit to the fortune of war, and while still holding the 
north side of the abbey and ground to the east and south- 
east, could not keep the enemy from bombing his way into 
a part of the ruins and into the southern ditch which had 
been captured with the help of the Tanks. 

So the situation remained last evening and night. New 
and heavy rainstorms increased the ugly discomforts of our 
men. 

They were clinging on to water-logged holes. They were 
wet to the skin, covered in slimy mud, and cold and weary. 
The wounded among them were in a tragic plight. 

The dead seemed to have all the luck. . . . But the fight- 
ing spirit did not desert them. New bombs arrived, and 
that heartened them. Some of their comrades came fighting 
up from the south. 

Early in the morning there were roars of explosion as 
the bombs crashed into the south ditch and then burst 
among the abbey ruins. It was then that there was hot 
fighting underground as well as above ground. Our men 
"cleaned up" Eaucourt I'Abbaye. 

It is a technical phrase which has a very grim meaning. 



NORTHWARD FROM THIEPVAL 365 

There are no Germans there now in the abbey vaults, except 
the bodies of their dead. 

In those great arched cellars, where old spiders have spun 
their webs, and where old monks once came blinking down 
with horn lanterns to fetch the abbot's wine, or to count 
their stores, English soldiers, covered with mud, but drier 
now, sit rubbing up their rifles and binding up their wounded 
and talking of the fight that is over. 



XXXVIII 
THE WAY TO BAPAUME 



I 

October 7 
Our troops have taken advantage of fine weather after 
heavy rains to make a new attack this afternoon upon a 
German front of 12,000 yards, and have captured a number 
of important positions, including the fortified village of Le 
Sars, to the north-west of Eaucourt I'Abbaye. For several 
days past the pressure of our attack had to be slackened 
on account of the bad state of the ground and the rain- 
storms, which prevented artillery and aerial observation. 

It was bad luck upon our men, as it increased the difficul- 
ties for getting up the supplies essential to the success of a 
new move forward, and made the battlefields one vast bog, 
in which guns and men and wagons and mules were clogged 
with slime and mud. 

Yesterday the sky cleared, and the men who had taken 
Eaucourt I'Abbaye by such a gallant struggle pushed out 
and seized the mill-house to the west of those ruins from 
which the enemy had been maintaining heavy machine-gun 
fire. 

It is to those who know what mud and rain mean to an 
army in the field an astonishing and audacious thing to 
attack in such numbers to-day, abruptly and without waiting 
for more favourable conditions of ground. 

At this hour, when heavy fighting continues along the 
whole line from Le Sars eastwards towards Le Transloy, 
it is impossible to write more than a few details of the 
progress that has been made already, 

366 



THE WAY TO BAPAUME 367 

The taking of Le Sars itself is the gain of another fortress 
defending the way to Bapaume, the main road to that town 
running through the village, which was in a natural position 
of defence protected by a deep cutting on the right, by a 
double line of trenches to the south and by machine-gun 
emplacements with a wide field of fire. 

It was from that position that our troops were heavily 
enfiladed in their first assaults upon the Abbey ruins, and 
the enemy had determined to defend it desperately, as it 
holds a position of great strategic importance to our future 
drive against them. 

Well, they have lost it. Before the red dusk this evening 
our airmen, who were hovering over the place high above 
the shell-fire, signalled back that our infantry were well into 
the town and sending back batches of prisoners. 

It was a rapid assault. Within an hour our men had 
fought their way across the tangle of trenches and shell- 
craters just below the village, and had gained their chief 
objectives, which included the deep cutting striking into the 
village from the right. 

The only way of escape for the Germans was westwards 
through a belt of scarred and blackened tree-stumps. I do 
not know yet whether they had been dislodged from that 
primeval burial-place called the Butte de Warlencourt, which 
rises about fifty feet to the north of Le Sars on the right of 
the Bapaume Road. 

The ground beyond has the village of Le Barque on the 
right of the road and four sunken cross-roads called the Cut- 
Throat on the west of a deep ravine, just above the village 
of Warlencourt-Eaucourt. It is here that the enemy will 
be under our barrage and the enemy's troops must rally 
there if they can for any counter-attack. 

East of Le Sars and north of Flers and Lesboeufs British 
battalions have made solid progress, driving back the enemy 
out of trenches hurriedly scraped up during recent weeks, 
but not so richly provided with dug-outs as his earlier lines, 
so that when our guns concentrated their fire on them the 



S68 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

only escape from great slaughter was to hold them thinly 
with the main reliance on machine-guns for defence. 

Our right wing has advanced about a kilometre from 
Lesbceufs towards Le Transloy, where it has linked up with 
the French battalions pressing forward to Sailly-Saillisel, 
with their usual dashing spirit of attack. 

It seems that the day has been in our favour all along the 
line of this sweeping movement. We shall know more and 
may tell more in a few hours. 



2 

October 8 

The men who took Le Sars are still holding it, and only 
the short facts of their case come back from them through 
the mist and across the waterpools. Last night and this 
morning it has been raining again, in a drizzling way, and 
all the shell-craters are ponds. 

It would be possible to swim in some of them, those 
scooped out by the biggest shells and linked up with others. 
It is not easy to get runners back across country like that, 
and the Germans find it harder and are drowned in many 
of those pits, because of our artillery fire pouring "stuff" 
over them. 

Yet, curiously, it is from the Germans that one learns 
most of the frightful drama which went on yesterday after- 
noon in Le Sars village. They are prisoners, 300 of them, 
with five officers who were sent back to safety, while our 
men stayed on and fought on. 

Those from the village — it's just the name that stands — 
belong to the 321st and 322nd "Ersatz," or Reserve Regi- 
ment. They had been reinforced, strengthening the garri- 
son and expecting an attack, by some uncanny means, at the 
exact minute. 

They were stout fellows — our officers pay them this trib- 
ute — and they had been ordered to fight to the last man 



THE WAY TO BAPAUME 369 

rather than surrender this fortress, which is one of the gates 
barring the long road to Bapaume. 

They trained their machine-guns and trench mortars on 
our front trenches, kept their rifles dry by wrapping them 
in rags, and sent out volunteers and victims to lie in the 
shell-pits waist-high in water to snipe our men as they came 
over. 

They knew that they had a poor chance really to keep 
Le Sars, and their best hope of life or death was to put up a 
hard fight. Our guns had already smashed the houses and 
barns to rubbish heaps like those of Martinpuich and Cour- 
celette — even a little more, judging from what our airmen 
saw — and our nine-point-twos, eight inches, and other mon- 
ster guns were making a worse hell of the place. 

The men of the German 361st and 362nd regiment of 
reserves lay low in their dug-outs and tucked their heads 
down in new trenches, finely built in a hurry. 

What happened first was that our barrage lifted and long 
waves of brown soldiers sprang over their parapets facing 
up from ground close south of Le Sars and on the German 
left from the edge of Eaucourt I'Abbaye and the mill-house 
beyond. 

Their first goal on our right was one of those beastly 
quadrilateral redoubts called the Tangle (there is another 
behind our new line at Eaucourt), and after that the road 
from Martinpuich, north-eastwards, and then forward to 
the Butte de Warlencourt — that old high tumulus in which 
the bones of some prehistoric man lay until we flung them 
up to the surface of our modern civilisation. 



The Tangle was the first check and a bad one. Machine- 
guns swept the field with bullets so that men lay on their 
faces in the mud, not bothering, you may guess, about 
appearances. They were just scarecrows and mud-larks, 



370 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

wallowing in slime but finding an inch or two of luck in it. 
Another muddy thing came on the way to the Tangle, more 
like a primeval river hog than in the early days of its debut, 
because of the mountains of slush churned up by its flanks. 

The Tank turned its snout towards the Tangle and strug- 
gled over the choppy ground — wave upon wave of craters 
with high rims, until it reached a bit of the deep cutting 
which makes a hole in the side of Le Sars. 

This sunken road, or old quarry track, was filled with 
German soldiers alive and dead. The living ones flung 
bombs at the Tank, fired rifle volleys and tried to stab it 
from beneath as it straggled across the ditch and stayed 
across it firing venomously from each flank. After that, 
something having happened to its internal organs, it com- 
mitted hari-kari. But it seems to have been useful before 
going up in a blaze of glory. 

The German prisoners who faced our men in the outskirts 
of Le Sars, and then further back in the sunken road, and 
in the hiding places below ground, say there was grim and 
bitter fighting there, and pay a soldier's tribute to the men 
who captured them. "They fought us fiercely, and beat 
us. We could not stand up against them." Our men saw 
red, even in the mist, and in the hand-to-hand fighting they 
had the Germans by the throat. 



XXXIX 

THE GERMAN VERDICT OF THE 
SOMME BATTLES 



I 

October 3 
There has come into our hands, by the fortune of war, a 
long and critical report by General Sixt von Armin, com- 
manding the fourth German Corps against the British front 
in the Battle of the Somme during July. 

It is an important historical document. The German 
general has written it as a great soldier writes on his own 
subject, without passion or prejudice, in a cold scientific 
spirit, analysing the qualities of his enemy as well as the 
enemy's weaknesses, and exposing the errors and failures of 
his own organisation, leadership, and troops with the same 
impartial candour. 

It is well done, minutely technical, full of military knowl- 
edge and common sense. But in setting all these things 
down, in this analysis of German organisation, tactics, ma- 
terial, and moral, during the first month of our great of- 
fensive. General von Armin has confessed to the utter fail- 
ure of his war-machine. 

In almost every paragraph, dealing with every depart- 
ment of his corps in fighting organisation, there is this con- 
fession of breakdown and an acknowledgment of British 
superiority. 

No general of ours writing of our own troops, or of our 
own artillery, or air service, could claim greater supremacy 
than is granted to us by this German army-corps-commander 
in his comparison between our power and his own. To our 

371 



372 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

soldiers this document is worth a thousand times its weight 
in gold as a moral tonic, for everything they hoped had been 
attained in this battle of the Somme — the ever increasing 
strain upon German organisation, the effect of our artillery 
fire, the mastery of our flying corps, the demoralisation of 
the enemy's command, is here admitted as the bitter fruit of 
experience. It is the fruit of one month's experience. 

Since then there have been more months, and not all the 
lessons set down in this document have been of help to the 
enemy, but the cup of bitterness has been filled and refilled. 



The Report begins with a tribute to our British infantry, 
which, says General von Armin, "has undoubtedly learnt 
much since the autumn offensive" (of 1915). 

"It shows great dash in attack, a factor to which immense 
confidence in its overwhelming artillery greatly contributes. 
The Englishman also has his physique and training in his 
favour. 

"The English infantry showed great tenacity in defence. 
This was especially noticeable in the case of small parties, 
which when once established with machine-guns in the 
corner of a wood or group of houses were very difficult to 
drive out." 

Again and again General von Armin reveals the new and 
overwhelming power of our artillery. 

"Particularly noticeable was the high percentage of 
medium and heavy guns with the artillery, which, apart 
from this, was numerically far superior to ours. The am- 
munition has apparently improved considerably. 

"All our tactically-important positions were methodically 
bombarded by the English artillery, as well as all known 
infantry and battery positions. 

"Extremely heavy fire was continuously directed on the 
villages situated immediately behind the firing line as well 



GERMAN VERDICT OF SOMME BATTLES 373 

as on all natural cover afforded by the ground. Registration 
and fire control were assisted by well organised aerial ob- 
servation. At night the villages also were frequently 
bombed by aeroplanes." 

The terrifying destructive power of our artillery is re- 
vealed not only by these definite statements, but in advice 
under separate headings. Thus, in the instructions to 
officers selecting infantry positions : 

"Narrow trenches with steep sides again proved very 
disadvantageous, and caused considerably more casualties 
(men being buried) than shallower trenches with a wide 
top. ... A cover trench roughly parallel with the front 
fire trench is not sound. Such trenches are destroyed by the 
enemy's fire at the same time and exactly the same way as 
the actual fire trenches." 

Heavy casualties were also experienced during July by 
the German artillery, as the following note shows: 

"The English custom of shelling villages heavily led to 
the adoption of the principle that batteries should never be 
sited in the villages themselves. . . . The employment of 
steep slopes for battery positions must also be discarded 
for similar reasons." 

A melancholy picture is drawn of the German battle 
headquarters, also brought under fire by our far-reaching 
artillery, and in such a zone of fire that German staff officers 
get killed on their way up or cannot find their whereabouts, 
or having found the building scuttle down into overcrowded 
hiding-places, panic-stricken by our bombardments. Owing 
to choosing unsuitable sites for battle headquarters there 
were "frequent interruptions in personal and telephone 
traffic by artillery fire, and overcrowding in the few avail- 
able cellars in the villages." 

That rush for cellars already thronged must hurt the 
pride and dignity of the German staff. They are recom- 
mended to have many sign-boards put up to direct them to 
battle headquarters, and to avoid "lengthy searches which 
caused many casualties." 



374 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 



The enemy's own artillery was much hampered during 
the July battles by the steady intensity of our fire. 

"It was found very difficult," says General von Armin, 
"to form a continuous barrage, without gaps, in front of 
our own lines, owing to the occasional uncertainty as to 
the position of our front line, which was continually chang- 
ing during the fighting, the frequent changing of batteries, 
the re-grouping of the artillery, which was often necessary, 
the bad conditions for observation, the permanent inter- 
ruption of the telephone communications, and the practically 
continuous heavy fire which was maintained behind our 
front line." 

The General describes in detail the enormous difficulties 
experienced by his officers in bringing up reserves quickly 
for counter attacks, owing to the severity of our barrage, 
the breakdown of telephonic communications, the killing 
of the runners, and the time taken for transmission of orders 
from the front line. 

The troops have to "advance slowly across country, with 
which they are generally unacquainted, and under heavy 
fire." 

He confesses to the utter failure of the counter-attacks 
made against us during July without method and without 
weight. His words are: 

"li counter-attacks, which, on account of the situation, 
ought to be methodically prepared, are hurried, they cost 
much blood, and cause the troops to lose their trust in their 
leaders if they fail, which nearly always happens in such 
a case." 



With regard to the air service General von Armin ac- 
knowledges in strong language the supremacy of the British 
and the failure of their own : 



GERMAN VERDICT OF SOMME BATTLES 375 

"The means for providing the artillery with aerial ob- 
servation has proved to be insufficient. . . . The numerical 
superiority of the enemy's airmen and the fact that their 
machines were better were made disagreeably apparent to 
us, particularly in their direction of the enemy's artillery 
fire and in bomb-dropping. 

"The number of our battle-planes was also too small. 
The enemy's airmen were often able to fire successfully on 
our troops with machine-guns by descending to a height of 
a few hundred metres. 

"The German anti-aircraft gun sections could not con- 
tinue firing at this height without exposing their own troops 
to serious danger from fragments of shell. . . . 

"A further lesson to be learnt from this surprisingly bold 
procedure on the part of the English airmen is that the 
infantry make too little use of their rifles as a means of 
driving off aircraft." 



The Army Corps commander responsible for the organi- 
sation and direction of the troops who fought against us in 
July finds failure and shortage in almost every department 
of war material at his disposal. 

The supply of artillery ammunition of all kinds during 
the first days of the battle did not equal the expenditure. 
Reserve supplies were only available in very small quantities. 

There were "repeated requests from all arms for an in- 
creased supply of entrenching tools." 

"The original supply of maps was insufficient, not only 
as regards quantity, but also as regards detail." 

The supply of horses and vehicles to the troops "has 
reached the utmost limits owing, on the one hand, to the 
permanent reduction in the establishment of horses, and on 
the other hand to the permanent increase in fighting material 
and articles of equipment." 

"The existing telephone system proved totally inadequate 



376 THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME 

in consequence of the development which the fighting took." 

"The existing organisation in the light signalling service 
does not meet requirements." 

The supply of light pistols for signalling "is too small." 

The establishment of motor cycles proved insufficient for 
the heavy fighting. This deficiency was "painfully evident." 

"The great weight" of the German machine-guns "has 
again proved to be a serious disadvantage under these con- 
ditions." 

"Complaints have been received that the ammunition- 
boxes and water-jackets of the machine-guns are too heavy." 

"It is universally suggested that the supply of hand- 
grenades should be increased." 

With regard to food there is no suggestion that the army 
behind the lines is on short rations, but there are difficulties 
in getting supplies up to the front trenches, and it is recom- 
mended that men going into action should carry their "third 
iron rations" — that is, a more ample supply of tinned foods. 

They ask for more tinned meats, tinned sausages, bread, 
and mineral waters, but the General advises that tinned her- 
rings should not be eaten, as they encourage thirst. 

In all but the food department the German organisation 
of supplies is weighed in the balance and found wanting by 
one of their own great Generals. 

In spite of all their boasted genius of organisation, and 
it has been wonderful (let us admit that handsomely), it 
could not withstand the tremendous pressure of our July 
thrust. 

It failed item by item — artillery, aviation, ammunition, 
and stores of every kind. The staffs were inadequate, the 
communications broke down, the great German war-ma- 
chine was strained and put out of gear and badly knocked 
about by the ferocity and continuance of the British 
assault. 

Since then it has not been able to recover its efficiency. 
The pressure has become more powerful, the strain harder 
to bear. 



GERMAN VERDICT OF SOMME BATTLES 377 

If General von Armin were to write a second report on 
the battle of the Somme it would be a more gloomy docu- 
ment than this. But what he has written stands, and it is a 
frightful confession which would put terror into the hearts 
of the German people could they read it. 

They will not be allowed to read it, for it tells the truth, 
which the War Lords are hiding from them. 

It will be seen that my despatches do not include the cap- 
ture of Beaumont-Hamel — one of the most astounding 
achievements in all this fighting. In October I was com- 
pelled to go home on sick-leave, so that I missed that great 
battle on the Ancre. It has revived the nation's hope that by 
a continuous series of these blows the German resistance 
will break down utterly at last and that they will acknowl- 
edge defeat. From a military point of view that hope is 
the best thing we have, but the fulfilment of it must be 
deterred through many months of another year reeking like 
this one of blood and massacre and sacrifice. 




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